Planning Commission Regular Meeting

James FeatherGood evening. Welcome to the regularly scheduled meeting of the City of Fairfax Planning Commission for Monday, October 26, 2026. First order of business is the Pledge of Allegiance. Please rise as you are able and join us.

Dave McElhaneyapplicantI pledge

James Featherallegiance

Dave McElhaneyapplicantto

James Featherthe flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Welcome. We have a full agenda this evening. The first order of business is discussion and adoption of the agenda. It was issued ahead of time as required. Do we have a motion or any proposed changes to the agenda?

Paul CunninghamMr. Chair, I move the agenda be adopted as presented.

James FeatherSecond. It's been moved and seconded to adopt the agenda as it's been presented. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Extensions? Passes unanimously. Next order of business. Presentations by the public on any matter not calling for a public hearing. We have four public hearings this evening. One is the Courthouse Plaza Redevelopment. One is the gallery at City Center redevelopment, and we have two matters related to other business, small area plan zoning text amendments, as well as a subdivision amendment. If there's anybody who would like to speak to the commission on any other matter, you're welcome to do so at this time. Madam Clerk, has anybody signed up for this section? No.

Douglas Stewartpublic commentIf

James Featheranybody would like to address the commission on any other matter? Seeing none, we will move on. We have no minutes to approve this evening, and we have no items not requiring a public hearing, so we will move to our public hearing section of the agenda. First order of business is for Courthouse Plaza. This is a public hearing for 10300 Willard Way and 3922 Blenheim Boulevard. The applicant combined courthouse LLC, combined Columbia Glade LLC seeks a phased redevelopment of the courthouse plaza shopping center. Across two phases, the applicant proposes two upper story residential mixed use buildings with first floor retail, structured parking, expanded open space, an expanded street network on approximately 10.34 acres.

James FeatherThe applicant is requesting a zoning map amendment from commercial retail and commercial general with proffers to plan development mixed use while retaining the Old Town Fairfax transition overlay district. Presentation by staff. Welcome, Ms. Swire.

Clara SwirestaffGood evening, Chair Feather and Planning Commissioners. Tonight is the public hearing for the redevelopment of Courthouse Plaza located at 10300 Willard Way and 3922 Blinden Boulevard. We're currently in the public hearing phase of the development review process. So tonight I'll give a presentation and Planning Commission will give a recommendation to the City Council on the zoning map amendment and master development plan. This is an aerial of the site on the right. the site is comprised of two parcels courthouse Plaza shopping center is located on the larger parcel and the new layered restaurant is located on the smaller parcel the site is currently zoned CR commercial retail and CG commercial general with proffers the applicant is proposing a rezoning to PDM

planned development mixed-use while retaining the Old Town Fairfax transition overlay district. The site is in the Old Town Fairfax Activity Center. The Old Town Fairfax small area plan envisions a new construction residential commercial or mixed-use building with a six-story height limit and a grocery store anchor. The small area plan envisions publicly accessible open space and above-grade structured or underground parking with retail frontage oriented towards new streets and public open space. So I want to give some background and go through what's changed with the application through different iterations of this proposal. So the site was subject to a land use application last year. So that's what's

shown here on the left. The application for redevelopment included 315 residential units, structured and street parking and a small green space in between the new building and Safeway this proposal did not include the pad site the proposal was denied by the City Council in October of 2025 following staff's recommendation staff's main concerns with the previous proposal were consistency with the small area plan specifically the road network pedestrian and vehicular connections, open space, and that this was a non-phase development. The plan would have left the majority of the site undeveloped, and it would have stayed as it exists today. On the right is phase one of the current proposal. The applicant now proposes to bring in the pad site as part of this application.

Since the Planning Commission work session on June 22nd, the applicant has added a pedestrian from Blenheim Boulevard into the site, and that also includes landscaping. Also, since the work session are widened public sidewalks, University Drive and Blenheim Boulevard are now proposed at a minimum of 10 feet wide. With this submission, the applicant proposes further activation of University Drive by adding stoops to that street frontage. also new since the work session is open space in an interim phase so that would take place in between phases one and two the old version of the proposal that was denied in the old version of the proposal that was denied last year there was no phase two so the image on the left shows the extent of last year's denied proposal

and then in phase two the applicant builds on the vehicular connection proposed in phase one by adding an additional north to south street and extending a new street proposed in phase one from university drive to blenham boulevard the applicant proposes 20 open space in phase two and phase two also includes additional residential units and approximately 50,000 square feet of first floor retail. The applicant has also updated the architecture since the work session and BAR has recommended approval of the architecture and landscaping to the City Council. So the photo on the left is the image I showed at the last Planning Commission work session and then on the right is what's been approved by the Board of Architectural Review. The applicant

proposes to step down the building at the corner of Democracy Lane and University Drive. Another new addition is the reface of the existing shopping center to remain. So the shopping center is proposed to be refaced to match the new mixed-use residential building, and that would be in phase one. So that was a high-level overview of what's changed since the The proposal was denied last year and since our last work session. So now I'll go into more detail with each phase. So phase one includes a new mixed use building with 315 residential units and approximately 12,500 square feet of first floor retail and an approximately 72 foot height maximum. approximately 57,900 square feet of open space including a park in between the new building and

the remaining Safeway building a pedestrian plaza at the eastern end of the plaza where the former bank drive-through is and then a landscape area with a pedestrian path leading into the site from Blinnon Boulevard. The applicant proposes two new streets, new and widened sidewalks, and then new landscaping, including street trees, 739 parking spaces, and surface and structured parking. The applicant proposes facade updates to the existing shopping center and the two buildings on the pad site are proposed to remain in their current condition. The applicant also proposes public art along the street one facade. So the pedestrian connections are proposed on all sides of the proposed building. This includes widened sidewalks to at least 10 feet

University Drive and Blenheim Boulevard. New sidewalks are proposed along new streets so that's proposed Street 1 and proposed Street 2. Pedestrian paths are proposed throughout the site along the existing sidewalk in front of Safeway within the pad site and a new pedestrian path is proposed into the site from Blenheim Boulevard. Vehicular connections are proposed on all sites of the proposed building. The University Drive and Democracy Lane. The applicant proposes two new streets. Proposed Street 1 starts a new connection connecting University Drive to Blaine Boulevard, and then proposed Street 2 would be a new north to south street on the site. This is the proposed open space plan. The applicant proposes approximately 12.9% open space in Phase 1.

The applicant proposes the remaining required 20% open space in Phase 2. the zoning ordinance requires open space in a planned development district to meet certain requirements so two of those requirements are that spaces should be at least 50 feet wide and that 60 percent of the required open space must be contiguous open spaces meeting the requirements in the first phase are the retail amenity courtyard and the plaza to the west of Safeway in between Safeway and the proposed

Speaker 26mixed-use building the

Clara Swirestaffapplicant commits to providing interim open space if an application for phase two hasn't been filed by December 31st 2034 the interim open space would be an additional 7,500 square foot space at the northeastern edge of the site and that would meet the zoning ordinances width and contiguity requirements so this is the phase two plan phase two would require a future amendment to the master development plan in phase two 315 residential units are proposed along with 50,000 square feet of first floor retail 90,000 square feet of open space and 980 parking spaces and surface and structure parking an additional north to south street is also proposed so this is the pedestrian connectivity plan for phase

two in phase two pedestrian connections are proposed on both sides of the future north to south road through the future open space along the northern drive aisle along closet Drive and through the pad site and phase two an additional north to south street is proposed primary 1 and 2, Democracy Lane, and the future road. And a secondary path is proposed through the PAD site. The applicant is proposing the minimum of 20% open space in phase 2. Open space is proposed in a future residential amenity courtyard and the future open space between the two buildings and within the PAD site. So the next two slides are elevations. The Board of Architectural Review recommended approval of the application at the September 16th, 2026 meeting. The

first image on the top is the south elevation, so this is looking at the building from proposed Street 1, and the bottom image is looking at the proposed building from University Drive. The top image here is looking at the building from Democracy Lane, and you can see here that the applicant stepped down the building at the corner by one story. The bottom image is looking at the building Street 2. And it's worth mentioning here that the applicant is requesting a special exception for building height. As you all know, the Planning Commission doesn't vote on the special exception, but the applicant is proposing a maximum height of 72 feet, and the zoning ordinance allows a maximum of 48 feet in the transition overlay district.

The next few images are renderings. The image on the left is of Street 2, and the image on the right is at the corner of Street 1 and Street 2. The image on the left is the corner of University Drive and Democracy Lane, and the image on the right is the intersection of University Drive and Street 1. And then these two images show the proposed façade reface of Courthouse Plaza in Phase 1. right also just shows more detail of the plaza to replace the former bank drive-through so since we last met the City Council held a post submission work session with the applicant on July 28th 2026 and the City Council gave the applicant some feedback feedback council members commented that the changes made

to the proposal were an improvement from the previous iterations of the plan several council members shared concerns regarding height and density of the proposal and council members commented that the widened sidewalks and increased green spaces were a benefit and the Board of Architectural Review held a public hearing on September 16th 2026 and recommended approval of the application the applicant is requesting a rezoning approval of a master plan, a special exception for height, and a major certificate of appropriateness for architecture and landscaping. The Planning Commission will only vote on the rezoning and associated master development plan. Staff recommend approval of the zoning map amendment from CR Commercial Retail and CG

Commercial General with proffers to PDM plan development mixed use. In my staff report, I outlined one outstanding issue with the commitment statement regarding FOR A CERTIFIED POLICE OFFICER. THE APPLICANT HAS MADE THE CLARIFICATION THAT THIS WOULD BE A FREE UNIT FOR A CERTIFIED POLICE OFFICER. SO THIS IS NO LONGER A CONCERN OR AN OUTSTANDING ISSUE. AND THE REVISED COMMITMENT STATEMENT WILL BE PROVIDED TO THE CITY COUNCIL AS AN ATTACHMENT IN THE PUBLIC HEARING PACKET. AND THEN THE NEXT STEPS FOR THE APPLICATION IS THE CITY COUNCIL PUBLIC HEARING. AND THAT CONCLUDES MY PRESENTATION.

James FeatherThank you. As a comment, unless there are any pressing questions for staff, we will move on to a presentation by the applicant. If I

Kirsten Lockhartcould just ask one procedural question for context. By approving the Master Development Plan, what is the Planning Commission giving our approval

James Featheron?

Clara SwirestaffJust the rezoning.

Kirsten LockhartBut isn't the second portion approving the Master Development Plan update? Right.

Clara SwirestaffYes. So you'd be approving the plan and the materials, like the packet, and then also the rezoning. Okay.

James FeatherWe're actually making a recommendation for approval. Right, right. Yes.

Clara SwirestaffThe recommendation. Yes. Yes. You're not approving anything,

Kirsten Lockhartbut

Speaker 26not necessarily the approval,

Kirsten Lockhartmaking any recommendations on the specific height or density of the proposal. Correct. Correct. Yeah. Thank you.

Daniel DrummondChairman Feather. Mr.

James FeatherGrumman.

Daniel DrummondThank you, sir. Quick question, what is the base height of the proposed activity center for this area where this building would be built?

Paul NaptystaffThat is defined in the adopted small area plans, and so the recommended maximum height in the adopted small area plan is six stories for this location. Okay, thank you.

Daniel DrummondOkay.

James FeatherMR. Let's move on to the applicant, the applicant's representative. Welcome, Ms. Novotny. MS.

Molly NovotnyapplicantGood evening, Chair Feather, members of the Commission. My name is Molly Novotny. I'm an urban planner at Curata Partners, and I'm pleased to be here before you all tonight to talk about the Courthouse Plaza. Next slide. Okay. Combined Properties is a longstanding landowner in the City of Fairfax. In fact, they own the most property in the City of Fairfax of a private developer. They own four different centers. Scout on the Circle is in the upper right corner in the northeast quadrant of town. They own Pickett and Turnpike Shopping Centers in the southeast. And then this project that we're going to talk about tonight, Courthouse Plaza, is in the heart of the city. Next slide. As Clara mentioned, the property is a little more than 10 acres.

it is most known and well well known for the Safeway shopping center that has been there for over 50 years importantly Safeway controls a lot of this property given their long-term lease and so the area that we're able to bring forward today with phase one is an area that combined properties controls even though they own the whole center the lease controls the portion of the parking lot in front of Safeway which is why we've done this phase development Next slide. What you can see here is the area in red is the area that will be removed to be replaced with that multifamily building with a structured parking garage. The area in green will all be renovated. That's the existing, that's the Safeway store that will remain and the retail to the right

of that. Next slide. Every legislative application is guided by the city's small area plans or the city's planning policies for that property. This property is guided by the Old Town Fairfax small area plan. And what you see here, Council Member Drummond, you asked a question about height. These images are right from your small area plan, and it identifies this property, which is circled in green, for being heights of up to six stories. But even more specifically, it identifies building layouts and a mix of uses that would be appropriate here. So the small area plan says we want the retail to go away, and we want it to be redeveloped with a mix of uses. include six-story height limits, grocery store, new parks, structured

parking. These are the guiding documents that the guiding policies that have been in place for the last six years and what this application is based upon. Next slide. And more importantly this pie chart is also in that small area plan. This pie chart said hey this area of Old Town is very heavy in terms of commercial and office space so the pie chart on the left showed back in 2020 the mix of uses there and what you see is there's 21% retail and restaurants at that time in this quadrant of town that's what was there but they're actually calling for there to be 11% of retail and restaurants at the end of the small area plan so they're trying to right-size the retail in this portion of town and by doing that they're adding in multifamily so there is no multifamily in

this again the area that about founded by that small area plan when it was adopted and they're calling for there to be 52% multifamily at the end of the at the end of redevelopment Clara mentioned how this project has changed since 2025 in 2025 we didn't have a rezoning which is why we were not before you and so that's why we're here now because we brought forward a rezoning the most significant thing that has changed though is staff is now supportive of this application and of this application for the reasons clara mentioned but for all of these revisions that we have made in the last year so importantly we've added the rezoning so now it will no longer just be a straight commercial district it will be that planned development mixed use district

which the city desires for those kind of mixed projects we've included both parcels in the project and we've eliminated the majority of the special exceptions so we previously were asking for nine, we're now only asking for one, which is the height special exception, which is needed to match the place type, which is needed to match the planning designation of six stories.

Paul CunninghamNext slide.

Molly NovotnyapplicantWe've added a phase two. As I mentioned at the start of the project, at the start of my presentation, Safeway still controls a large portion of this property. Their lease is in place until the end of 2034. So we can't redevelop their site until that time, but there is the ability that we will be able to redevelop it after combined controls that property again. So that's what the phase two would show. It identifies a street network and a building envelope, but an additional open space there as well. We've also improved the pad site with this application now. That previously was not part of the application in 2025. An entirely new color palette. We worked with your BAR significantly. We've been before you and City Council.

We heard that the previous color palette was a little bit too stark, a little too modern for the city. We were asked to bring in some red bricks and some more earth tones. So we've done that with this revision and lowered the height at University and Democracy. Additional changes really affect the open space throughout the project. So we further developed the park that will be next to Safeway. We have added street planting, street trees, widened the sidewalks. We have added not only open space along Blenheim in the immediate term, but also in an interim phase if phase two doesn't come online as quickly as we'd like, and added more open space to that central park to create a linear spine of green through the property.

And then finally added pedestrian connections, widened street two, which is one of our new streets, and eliminated some pinch points. So we've really worked to make improvements from last year to this year. Next slide. And since we were before you in June, this is the list of improvements and revisions that we've made. The leasing office was previously along our internal street, too. We heard that some council members really wanted that street, too, to remain as a wholly retail street, so we relocated the leasing office to university. That said, we've still maintained the retail at the corner of University and Street 1. So University will have both the leasing office and retail. We've added some stoops to University Drive to create some more pedestrian activity there,

widened that sidewalk, and committed to the retail, as I said, at the corner of University and Street 1, as well as to keep it at Street 2. As I mentioned, with architecture, we've reevaluated that color palette. articulation, worked on expanding the brick along democracy, revised some window configurations and added some balconies. We did a lot of things to further articulate the building, to break down the massing and to create some more visual interest there. And so at the end of the day, this would be the phase one project. What you can see is the new building is the new parking garage that will support that new building is wholly wrapped by the building we will not have any exposed exposed parking garage

facades with that building we've got it's it's an interesting site because we have roads around all sides of the building so we don't really have a back of house so our architecture is really well treated the same around each side next slide this is that one revision that when we were here in June we talked to you all about we previously were showing a right out onto Blenheim you gave us good guidance that you'd prefer that to be a pedestrian connection rather than a vehicular one and so the plan got rid of the right out and instead just shows that as a pedestrian linear park and then in terms of architecture I'm just showing a couple and images showing the before and after so the images on the left are what you saw in June and the images on the right are our

current current design this is a long democracy what you'll see here on democracy this is the only entrance to the parking garage we really work to focus the the vehicles to the top part of the project along democracy rather than to have any sort of vehicular entrances from university or street one or two and then this is street street two our new internal road that will be lined with retail all at the ground floor we'll be adding 12 500 square feet of brand new ground floor retail with the removal of the portion of retail in the center today we're taking out about 25,000 so we're putting half of the retail that we take out we're replacing half of it and again that small area plan called for

replacing or removing about half the retail in the area so we're pretty squarely in line with the small area plan goals for retail next slide and then with this project we've also included the retail renovations for the everything in pink will be renovated these are everyone is very familiar with the existing architecture at the project and this will be the new architecture of the project bringing the color palette from the new mixed-use building across the entire property next slide and that shows a unified project for this the

Heidi Wrenpublic commentend of

Molly Novotnyapplicantphase

Heidi Wrenpublic commentone next

Molly Novotnyapplicantslide connectivity really quickly orange shows the vehicular routes lots of ways in and out of the project both north-south as well as east-west and then for the pedestrian the original the original plan had the pedestrians all routing along the existing retail but here you can see we've got we've added lots of pedestrian routes along Street 2 and out to Blenheim by the pad sites these just show our sidewalks around the property showing they're very wide we've got foundational plantings as well as street trees can flip through these this is our new Street 2 with our public park behind it. Democracy Lane, we're using tree grates here to widen that pedestrian walkway to be 10 feet, at least five foot is the sidewalk, but then you've got that

tree grate for another five feet. And then University expands beyond the 10 foot wide sidewalks there. We've got lots of street trees. We put those street trees closer to the building because there are some utilities underground that would prevent them from being planted closer to the street. And then And finally, open spaces. Currently the site today has just over 4% open space. It's supposed to have 20%. It's got just about 4%. At the end of phase one, we'll be closer to 13% open space, so three times the amount of open space that's there today. Next slide. That open space is going to come in lots of different ways. We've done this Triangle Park closer to the Safeway, which we're trying to leave that

really open to be flexible open space. We're gonna have a grass lawn seating areas areas to go out and grab an ice cream cone or throw a frisbee around with your child Next slide and then that linear the retail park is the former bank drive-through That's the end cap right now of their retail So we've committed that we will never bring a drive-through back at that part of the project and instead We're going to convert that to some nice open space as well as the linear park leading right out to Blenheim So overall that open space it really just is distributed throughout the property which we like. We've got open space along Blenheim as well as for the new project. The green courtyard interior to the building will have a pool, an area for residents to grill out

and kind of recreate with their neighbors. We have significant commitments as part of this project. As I mentioned, we've increased the open space three times the amount of open space. We're treating the stormwater. We are using some BMP, some jellyfish. We're reducing the impervious area of the property. widened the sidewalks around the property. We're committing to $305,000 toward future undergrounding. We don't have any overhead poles on our property. There are some that exist in the right of way. And so even though they're not on our property, it's not our responsibility. We're making a financial contribution to help those get undergrounded later. Six percent of our units will be set aside as ADUs for those making 60 percent or less

of AMI. In addition, we have a free unit for a Fairfax City police officer. We're contributing $1,600 towards schools. This is about $1,000 more than many applicants end up contributing. And $367 towards parks and then a $300,000 commitment to retail. This is pretty unique. I think this is the first sort of commitment that has been made in the city. I'll go into some details on the next slide. What we've done is we realize and recognize that we're going to be replacing retailers at the property. We also realize that some of these retailers are benefiting from lower rents than they may get in new spaces. So what we've decided to do, working with the city's economic development department, is to set aside up to $300,000 to help offset the cost for those tenants to find new spaces.

We'd love for them to stay in the city. As I mentioned, Combined Properties has three other projects in the city, all that have retail space. But even if not, if they stay in the city at another project, we're still going to help offset those higher rents for a period of up to three years. Then at our project to try to attract some of these retailers back or to attract new small startup retails, We've also committed to set rents low for up to three years with pre-negotiated increases to allow them to get their footing before they would pay a higher rent rate. This commitment is a $300,000 value, and so we'll be able to work with the city's Economic Development Department to make that money available for new tenants to our project or tenants who will be relocating from our project.

Next slide. And so with that, I'm happy to answer any questions, and I have members of the team here as well

James FeatherOkay, thank you commissioners questions for staff or and or the applicant Mr. Rice

Matthew RiceIt's good to see you again We've seen the project three or four times now in between pre-application briefings, work sessions, and public hearings. And this represents what I want to see from applicants, and that's listening and modifying plans in a meaningful way, even between pre-application of work session presentations and the current thing that we're seeing. It's just been a few months. And we sometimes have development plans come to us with aggressive, we will not make any compromises, you know, just with deaf ears, both to the public and to the people who are used to doing this professionally. So I'm really, really grateful, regardless of what emerges in the next few years. I'm grateful to you and to the applicant for listening and for making meaningful changes

because that is uncommon. And so this is good to see. With the niceties out of the way here at the beginning, let me just ask a couple of other questions. The current open space, you're going to sit a building on top of a little, some slivers of open space that are in the northwest corner.

Molly NovotnyapplicantGo back to the comparison. A couple more. Yep.

Matthew RiceYeah, so there are some current green areas on university between the parking lot and the roadway, and I assume those are also falling in the calculation. But just as a comment, those are completely unusable because of the slope. You can't really even use those. You can't walk up those. You can't picnic on there. They're just the open space that exists there is not conforming shape-wise to what we want to see. It's not usable open space. And so mathematics behind the calculation aren't triple. It's 13% over functionally something that approaches zero. And calculating the limit of that, even with a small amount of open space, you're infinitely better by converting an unused drive-through and the other

space in a way that frankly is impressive a little bit of a tease with a phase two hitting 20% open space is stunning there may be very few things that have come to us that more directly match the ideas within the small area plans for a central passageway this parcel is a crucial link between what will become a new community center st. Leo's Daniel's run Van Dyke Park and the very center of the city this is a keystone thing that we're discussing because it really is the connection and if there is no way to navigate for pedestrians in between Old Town Square and Van Dyke Park being able to do that through the middle of the block would be outstanding that would be such a big contribution and so I'm frustrated that phase two and what we see in phase two

might be you know quickly calculating it might be eight years off and if there is any way to convince the leaseholder that they would be much better off financially by allowing something to happen sooner it would be it would be very very helpful so I'm disappointed that that phase two might still be eight years off I've lived in the city for 18 years and like you said this is a 50 year old shopping center that's way way beyond its original useful design a couple other questions that pedestrian connectivity plan is great when we get teased with phase two which is fantastic in terms of connections inside inside the parcel for phase two it's great what I would really like to see is one small modification is some ability to walk in between the parking lanes for the mid

block parking strip approaching Safeway in the middle and then the one slightly to the east if one of those two locations could form a connection between the pad the existing layered and other site and more or less a way to cross all the way up to the building without having to navigate parking lots we just today had a bad accident out of the city but at the University Mall collision in a parking lot and a critical injury walking in parking lots is not fun it's when I'm at my worst and shaking my hand, you know, with my kids in tow, it's just not safe. And an additional way to navigate across the lot during phase one would be incredibly useful. And that would take, you know, eight feet out of the parking size, but it would make a huge improvement.

And it's impolite for me to, you know, require, at least for my support, all these additional modifications. given the sheer number of modifications you've already made but that would be a big one and it wouldn't add a huge expense to the project I really like the activated retail on Street 2 and the more that you could do to make that less of a street that would service a loading bay for Safeway and more like a real street that people would use I'm concerned about the fact that it sort of right now can you tell me how you'll provide some differentiation or at least some ability for folks hanging out in that triangle not to be overwhelmed with semis backing in to unload

Molly Novotnyapplicantyeah so if you're talking about the semis I hope you're talking about them for the Safeway because we don't we expect box trucks that for the residential building we are adding a new screen wall as well as all of the plantings there so right now that loading dock you know I mean a portion of the building but when that building when the cvs building comes down the loading dock would be exposed and so we've created and committed that we'll have a nice screen wall there to protect the park in that park space as well as a couple different layers of trees and plantings

Matthew Riceokay the more that could be done either time wise in terms of deliveries or something to segregate the public use of the green space from big trucks backing into unload that's incongruous and it just is the only complaint at this point I wanted to ask about the utility issue a couple of the renderings very clearly had you know power lines in the foreground yeah so you willing to commit 25% to an undergrounding process is the undergrounding process the utilities along university that we see in the rendering on the right side here

Molly Novotnyapplicantyes so it would be a larger a larger length of utilities that would get undergrounded because it doesn't really make sense to just do them in segments because then you're gonna have to have a poll to bring it back up again for the next segment so we're contributing to to the city for when they have more more either projects or money that that project could then be done at that point.

Matthew RiceOkay. So I do recall our distinguished public works director expressing frustration in a public meeting that dealing with the utility companies and undergrounding is the hardest, least favorite thing to do. And so anyway, the noticeable change in the renderings to have those utilities prominent choice and hopefully they do get underground at some point. I'm going to leave it there and thank you for your time tonight.

James FeatherQuestions for comments or questions for staff for the applicant? Mr. Drummond.

Daniel DrummondThank you Mr. Feather. It's good to see you again as always. For those of you who know Molly and I go way back and one of the things I am many years ago the council approved scout on the circle and it took another three to four years for it to get built now i understand market conditions and such could you tell us how long you expect it would take to start this construction yeah

Molly Novotnyapplicanti mean we hoping we get approved and then we would file that site plan right thereafter and so the site plan would need to go through the city city's process just like this application goes through the city's process except it's mainly at the staff permits grading permits and then we would be starting construction we control all of this land area right so we've aligned the leases such that combined properties can give the those tenants notice and then those tenants can relocate we're not waiting for any leases to expire or terminate it's already been contemplated combined has been in conversation with all of the tenants who are in the area that i showed in red so all of those tenants who would be affected combined has been

continue to be but the building will probably still remain the way it looks for another year while we go through those additional staff review process so

Daniel Drummondthat's a good segue to my second question which is say phase two doesn't happen what happened to the grocery store and what happens to I guess everything on the right side in phase two I'm looking at it directly

Molly Novotnyapplicantright yeah so we would then work to release that space. It could be another grocery store. That would be our hope. Our intent is to have this property be grocery anchored. I stand here today and I can't commit to do Phase 2. I will note that Phase 2 will require another review by that City and Planning Commission at that time and the City Council at that time. So tonight we're only requesting 315 units in one building, but a Phase 2 would come online following those additional reviews pending market conditions.

James FeatherMr. McCarthy. Thank

Tassos McCarthyyou. As a follow-up to that, has staff reviewed this? I think as it stands, it seems like the general consensus is everyone likes this as a bridge to a further master plan. Has staff reviewed this through the lens of being more permanent as if the second phase ultimately did it happen? Are they satisfied with the current condition of it?

Clara SwirestaffYeah, so we reviewed both phase one and phase two, so both of those are included in the master development plan. However, we don't know all the details right now of phase two. That's why they would have to come back for a master development plan amendment the time that they're ready to do that.

Tassos McCarthyBut as a standalone, you're satisfied with Phase 1 if that were going to be it for the foreseeable future?

Clara SwirestaffThat's not what they've presented, so that's not what I've reviewed. I've reviewed a phased plan.

Tassos McCarthyOkay, understood.

Molly NovotnyapplicantI will note, staff did ask us to add additional open space if we don't move forward with Phase 2 quickly. So by the end of 2034, if we've not filed for phase two, we're going to convert additional parking spaces because we will then control more parking spaces. We will convert additional parking spaces into green space. You can see in the middle image over along, yep, thank you very much, Megan, over along Blenheim, that entire area would become a park to help bridge the conversation. If we're not yet at phase two, but we want to get some more open space to kind of further improve this first phase. I hope that helps.

Tassos McCarthyYeah, understood. All right, thank you. Secondly, I wanted to ask if I read right the traffic analysis, the transportation analysis, excuse me, it says we're going to see fewer trips as a result of this. I

Molly Novotnyapplicanthave our transportation consultant here. Traffic is mitigated through this project because we now have a mix of uses. So we're taking retail out. We're adding residential in, so we get to benefit from that shared trips. the retail may live here as well. Did it buy you enough time to walk up?

Speaker 1Hello. So are you talking about phase one or phase two?

Tassos McCarthyI guess both of them, right? Yeah. And I think I understand, you know, you can have daily reductions, right? But that can coexist with, like, peak hour problems at the same time.

Speaker 1Yeah. So when we studied the site, we looked at just based on a traffic model of the retail and then also the existing traffic which is out

Tomapplicantthere.

Speaker 1So realizing that right now the retail is not up to its full potential in terms of traffic, like it's generating a lower number of trips than what it could generate when if it's like a vibrant, more bustling retail. So even given that fact, that table was shown for a comparison, but then for our traffic analysis, we added the trips that we have from this site onto the existing network and then analyzed the transportation network. So we are not really saying that it would be a reduction in the future. That table was just for if the retail is to be built out for its full capacity or potential, then it would be a reduction in that case.

Tassos McCarthySo fully built out, there will be less traffic than there is now?

Speaker 1Yes. Yeah. Looking at the synergy between mixed use, residential and retail, it will be lower trips in the future.

Tassos McCarthyEven during peak hours? Yes. Okay. Thank you. That's all I got for him. And then one more. You mentioned if phase two doesn't happen, you'll add the additional green space, which is great. One sidetrack on that. Is your private amenity space included in that calculation?

Molly NovotnyapplicantThe interior courtyard space is part of our overall open space. The city allows that to be counted because it does provide active recreation and open space for the residents. So, yes, that's part of it.

Tassos McCarthyOkay. But resident only?

Molly NovotnyapplicantIt's resident only,

Tassos McCarthyyes. Okay, understood. So, I digress. You mentioned adding more if it doesn't happen by Phase 2, doesn't happen by 2034. And then additionally, you talked about retail, that fund, that sounded great. Are those like goodwill gestures or are those binding?

Molly NovotnyapplicantThey're binding. They're part of our proper statement. Staff would definitely not have recommended approval if I just said, trust me.

Tassos McCarthyGood. Yes.

Molly NovotnyapplicantI wish. No. They're binding.

Tassos McCarthyAll right. I think that's all I got. Thank you.

James FeatherMr. Cunningham.

Paul CunninghamThank you. I'm glad that Mr. Rice mentioned the power lines. A question that I have that goes with that is how long is the $300,000 supposed to be escrowed for this to move forward? Or is this just a gift to the city forever?

Molly NovotnyapplicantThat's a good question. Let me see if we did. Check my commitment statement. I think we make that prior to the issuance of the first certificate of occupancy, we will fund that check. So then the city will collect interest on it if they haven't used it.

Paul CunninghamAnd they just keep it forever, which is a good thing and probably an interesting part because I guess where I'm going with that and looking at the power lines being there, I would expect them there to stay. When the flats was built, the discussion was made about undergrounding power lines, and that's your neighbor, just to the north. And it turned out that they would be willing to work with the city if the city were going to pay for the undergrounding of the power lines. So the power lines are still there, and that's your neighbor. Now we're going to at some point allow the city to work again with the power companies and for some portion of the cost they will get some assistance with undergrounding the power lines.

We've now just extended all the way from Layton Hall Drive up to almost downtown the undergrounding of the power lines at some future date with some portion of cost being in it as opposed to that being a required redevelopment cost to help make it a viable thing going forward. And my sense is that the date that we're going to get to most of this in the city, because it's expensive, is probably the 12th. The 12th of never, as the song says. It's not going to happen. It's just too expensive a thing for the city to do. And if we can't do it at the same time that redevelopment is done, not seem like a likely thing to get done anytime in the foreseeable future. Phase two being eight years out as you indicate, you can't indicate what's going to go on with

that. Safeway gets bantered about. Nobody throws around the terms Albertsons or Kroger. Many grocery stores are parts of big chains and decisions are made far away and for many of change so that redevelopment I think of that Safeway site is possible but then the question is it probable depending on the cost structure because they're not probably going to get a cost structure like they got 50 years ago when the original building was put in to look forward so you're starting at square one in debating with a grocery store coming in there. But have we taken out the possibility that if we have no other options at that point, that we would merely extend the lease and the existing arrangement would stay status

quo going forward until some, again, future date when there's a driver to make something happen?

Molly NovotnyapplicantYeah, we've made that commitment that we can't just extend the status quo lease because control of that parking field to replace it with open space so we've already shown that we will not just say great we'll just add a couple more years onto your existing lease we have to go back through a negotiation i think through the life of this application combined properties has shown that they want to improve this shopping center right but they have leases that they also have to honor and respect and they've worked very very hard over several years to align all of the leases left of Safeway. If we don't act on this, they will just release those spaces and then we're not seeing any improvements. So we do think it's a really appropriate time to move

forward with Phase 1. I've heard your comments before about overall density. Let's start with Phase 1 and see how the city appreciates and how the city absorbs those units and then we can look to figure out that next phase with the project.

Paul CunninghamOkay. Looking at the fact that we said that we're going to help businesses relocate, and that is a commendable thing to do. In my recent discussions or view of what is changing, we're putting a lot of residential into the former commercial space. We are not opening up any additional business space. And part of the challenge there is I'm beginning to hear it, and I don't know whether other people are or not, but my physical therapist has been told that his building might be going away in two years, two and a half years, and he better start looking for other space to move to. The lawyer for one of the boards or one of the outside activities that I am on probably going to lose his space in about two years, two and a half years, and he's contemplating

whether he should open new space and look for new space or just hang it up. The accountant that's in a different building for another entity that I'm working with has construction going on next to that building, and they've been told that all the real estate in that particular area is in play, and they don't expect their building to be around much longer, so leases are getting short, and they're starting to say, where should we start looking for space to make things happen? So with our taking a bunch of space out of this, I know that space is looked at as premium and not well used in the city, but all of the space we are losing and replacing with residential has to go someplace if those services need to stay.

and that's one of the challenges I think we have in giving up a lot of commercial space is that unless we're replacing it with something that's functional that benefits the city it's starting to become a challenge if we're looking forward

Molly Novotnyapplicantyeah and I appreciate that right I appreciate that conversation I do want to point out that this project has no office this project is completely retail and we are replacing we are only losing 12,500 screppy I know I know that's still a number right but from a grand scheme of retail in the city it is a smaller percentage and some of that space is empty today or not the most um that the retail space is not the most desirable space we do think that we're right sizing the center here combined properties also has vacancies at some of its other projects to allow some retail space to go into it.

Paul CunninghamOkay, so we can move people in. We've got 315 residential spaces going in. We're talking about making a contribution to schools. How many children are we expecting in this 315 units?

Molly NovotnyapplicantI don't think your school board calculated that. I don't know. We do know that multifamily generates, maybe staff has it, multifamily generates fewer than single-family attached or detached do

Paul Cunninghamwe know how many units there were in the Fairfax garden apartments that were torn down just a couple of years ago

Molly NovotnyapplicantI will note older older residential is different than newer residential in terms of school generation roughly

Paul Cunningham40 units and I think we had 26 children when we went through that process that were displaced from the affordable housing area portion of of that redevelopment so that are are we getting at when I look at the demographics of this what's the demographic going to be 50 at 25 to 40 year olds this we're expecting to be the tenants

Molly Novotnyapplicantwe're not limiting the demographic it's going to to be market rate units. Even the 6% affordable will be, whomever wants to come live here. We're not doing age-restricted one way or the other. But I will note, Commissioner Cunningham, 75% of our units are one-bedroom or one-bedroom den. So we're building smaller units here, which also should help reduce and not attract school kids because we're having smaller-sized units here. A lot of those older units are two-bedroom or three-bedroom units. Sorry.

Clara SwirestaffThat's great. about the student generation it would be 23 students generated from the phase one

Paul Cunninghamokay so we got 26 out of 40 units a couple of years ago because they're older and now we're going to get 23 out of 315 units but they're mostly one bedrooms which which points me toward a demographic of single people who are renters who are here for a short period of time and that's the demographic we're bringing in to our downtown business area which is just a hair older than the demographic in the flats but I suspect that they're going to age out and move out and we're going to expect in the future to refill with the same demographic we don't know

Molly Novotnyapplicantright we don't know right but we do know that for cities to continue to thrive and grow you want to be able to attract all different ages right and so I think many of you know I live in the city of Falls Church right where we are smaller than you all but we we've gone through a lot of the same growth that you

Speaker 26all have

Molly Novotnyapplicantright you want your city to attract the young people but you also want your city to have to have available units for older people to downsize and so a project like this that's walkable we think really hits both ends of the age spectrum as well as as well as folks in middle

William Fournierpublic commentokay

Paul Cunninghamlooking at usable open space as we talked about it if we could look at the general layout again and say where are we and just take a look at the way this lays out and attracts and then could we bring in the city's slide from that was one of theirs right at the start that showed the streets on all sides so we'll get a sense of that and have we got the one that shows the entire community nope

William Fournierpublic commentit's not that one either what

James Featherdo you mean entire community

Paul Cunninghamleighton hall to university to blenheim in showing the the future path for how this piece fits with the puzzle.

Clara SwirestaffFor the pedestrian?

Paul CunninghamFor pedestrian and general movement.

Clara SwirestaffAnd general movement. Okay, so this one's the pedestrian connectivity plan with the green dashes, and then this is the vehicular.

Paul CunninghamOkay. Do you have a slide? Is it from one of our future briefings then that shows, as I say Leighton Hall to University to Blenheim Boulevard

Molly Novotnyapplicantmaybe slide three looks like three okay

Speaker 9that's

Paul Cunninghama small area plan that's the one I'm looking for when we look at the future and this is going to be walkable and we're saying that the new community center is just off to the upper right and then we're headed toward downtown as i look north of this site i see an area that not only goes through this site but then continues up to layton hall are we designing this to fit a general thing so we can get walkability through this area in the future so that it's it's accessible yeah

Molly Novotnyapplicantthat's our goal to follow this the guidance of the smaller area plan now these these are you know not specific alignments our plan is showing specific alignment but it facilitates the but they're

Paul Cunninghamgeneral enough that if things are done toward the future because we have uh other processes coming through that leaves one large lot just in the north of you that this accessibility plan looks like it goes right through the middle of and then we've got another one there and as we're bringing it down the road on the south end is going to change. So accessibility as we're going north and south and that, so people can flow and walk as opposed to being trapped in cars where if you're going to get to this, you have to go on a car around the margin to get to the center is one of the challenges as we're laying this out.

Molly NovotnyapplicantYeah, so we only control the area bounded by red. I agree. we have our plan reflects what you see here on that smaller plan which gets to your point exactly to be able to allow pedestrians to walk north and south i can't control what's outside of our property but we've set up the framework within our property to meet that goal

Paul Cunninghamso that that goal is being met with this as opposed to the the new grocery store and the the proffered eight to 10-year plan

Molly Novotnyapplicantfilling

Paul Cunninghamin that portion on the north

Molly Novotnyapplicantso again in the first phase that grocery safeway remains right but we still do have this our new park and street two which heads to the north and then we'll connect with democracy and move forward that's that first phase and then the later phase all of the green creates that north south linear park sorry chair

Paul Cunninghamso if we get phase two it will fill in but if we don't get phase two then Safeway will still be the building will still be a blocking action for redevelopment that's long term probably older than I am

Molly NovotnyapplicantSafeway exists today the small area plan was designed knowing Safeway existed today right this is the vision when that Safeway lease comes up we have a better opportunity to achieve your full

Paul Cunninghamvision. To achieve the goal. Okay, as long as we're in that ballpark, we're even, is the open space really usable? When we look at how much open space there is, you've got the open space for tenants in the middle of the courtyard. You're turning a drive-through into open space. That's not really usable if you've been back there as a drive-through to look at it, or can that be made

Molly NovotnyapplicantYeah. So are you talking about the drive-thru by layered?

Paul CunninghamI'm trying about the drive-thru by McDonald's.

Molly NovotnyapplicantOkay. Yep. So come on, it's layered. Date it. So the layered, that is more passive open space, right? That's more planting area there. But we also have the drive-thru bank that's part of the retail shopping center. And that will become very usable, very, I think, desirable open space that we think could attract a end cap restaurant there because you'll have that ability to have some outdoor seating if

Paul CunninghamSafeway is not redeveloped otherwise it's short term

Molly Novotnyapplicantif Safeway is redeveloped then you'll have the phase two open space if face if Safeway is not redeveloped then you'll have this but regardless with phase one you will have that driveway at the end cap be replaced with the pergola and outdoor seating area that's open space in phase one the linear park is open space in phase and the retail park. So yes, you're going to have three separate and distinct brand new usable open space areas for the public in phase one.

Paul CunninghamOkay. Then the one area I still have concerns and everybody on the dais is going to look at me and groan is because over time this is now and that was then. originally you know the building is really tall along University Drive it needs to be less tall if it fits the past approvals that have gone into that area but that was then and this is now unfortunately in eight years nine years when we come back to deal with things this is going to be then and that is going to be now for what we want to do at the time so once you put it in we're going to live with it and I still think that is too big for University Drive and what is going on and it's a shame that the high ground is on the middle of the

site and goes down so that the low ground is actually University Drive in the street which means you're putting taller buildings on the street or if that were the high ground you can get away with shorter buildings and taller interior of the lot interior of the site

Molly Novotnyapplicantand

Paul Cunninghamthat's

Molly Novotnyapplicantpart

Paul Cunninghamof the challenge I think of of the density that I see with with that building being as big as it is in that area and as you said you live in Falls Church so you understand putting tall buildings next to small streets turns them into canyons and that's one of the things that Falls Church may have done but Fairfax hasn't yet

Molly Novotnyapplicantyeah and What I'll say is all development applications are guided by the small area plan that the planning commission recommends approval and the council adopts. And so this plan has been in place for six years calling for those buildings to be six stories tall. So we didn't earn approval of staff last time and Clara made the comment mainly because we weren't in conformance with the small area plan. So this has been the guiding principle and we have very closely aligned with it. But we have dropped the building height at Democracy to help with that transition, and we have added additional architectural details and added more brick to also help with the articulation and massing of the building.

Paul CunninghamI can live with more height away from the street than I can at the street and taking it down inward. So that's all I've got. Thank you.

Kirsten LockhartI'd actually like to return to the economics of the site, if we could. First, a point that I don't think has been raised, but I wanted to confirm. not use the sort of nationwide rental pricing software correct this will be priced independently for this building

Molly Novotnyapplicantyeah and we actually have a commitment that says we will not use it so one of our proffered commitments as we will not use that okay

Kirsten Lockhartand does that also exclude pricing and commensurate with Scout are those done differently or will those be done together are

Molly Novotnyapplicantyou asked I'm gonna give Aisha time to come up here are you asking the question Commissioner Lockhart if we're gonna compare the rents that we that combined charges at Scout with the Correct.

Kirsten LockhartAlgorithmically, are they part of the same calculations or are they done separately?

Speaker 26Good evening. So we typically do them separately, but they, of course, inform each other. We have about 2,200 units in our property portfolio collectively that are all in different places in Maryland and Virginia. And they sometimes inform each other, but the locations are very specific, too. So we've got to kind of track what's happening in the market specific to that location. Okay. Appreciate the clarification. The

Kirsten Lockhartnext thing I wanted to ask, obviously, these are going to be vendor-specific and sensitive, so I'm not asking you to disclose kind of the state of the current businesses. But obviously, that was a big discussion point with the previous proposal was kind of what's happening with the tenants who have, you know, invested in their spaces, taken advantage of lower rents. Could you give, like, a temperature rating of those negotiations and ongoing discussions or, like, a thumbs up, thumbs down?

Molly NovotnyapplicantI know she's been having those conversations. Sure.

Kirsten LockhartOr even just, you know, how complete would you say those conversations are at this point?

Speaker 26So definitely not complete. They've started mainly because we've been in this limbo where we don't have the approval. And so it's, you know, we don't want people to leave. It's actually probably going to be a year to two years before we can actually start construction. So we've been working with economic development to come up with a plan. And we're going to continue those conversations. And a lot of it will be tenant specific. You'll have some tenants who maybe want to come back or relocate within our own center, some who will find a new home somewhere else and won't want to come back to the center. But we're open. We did go through this at Scout. We were able to relocate some tenants to other properties.

And then we also are flexible with lease terms. So if someone needs to get out of their lease early, we won't penalize them. We're willing to work with all the tenants to help them find a new location, whether it's with us or elsewhere. Sure.

Kirsten LockhartAnd have you considered multi-tenancy development of some of the retail commercial spaces so that you could kind of find some economies of scale for smaller businesses

Speaker 26in that regard? It's something that we're open to and we've done as a company, but again, we're really far out. And what we've learned is until we kind of have a finite opening date for tenants, the conversations aren't quite as real. Okay. So we're a little too early for, you know, for us to be scouting new tenants specifically for the redevelopment.

Kirsten LockhartOkay. And then my last question is actually for Ms. Schweiger, if you don't mind. The staff economic assessment was a fairly broad range from like a loss of something in the hundred thousands to a gain annually of 500 plus thousand. Can you go into a little bit of what is driving that range?

Clara SwirestaffYeah, I'm probably not the best person to answer that question. One second. Here comes Here comes Brock.

James FeatherHere come the reinforcements. Welcome Mr. Harden.

Brock HardenstaffThe staff analysis is based on figures that come out of our budget and that's updated annually. and the range is based and it's purposely a broad range so the range looks at if there are low revenues and high costs associated revenues to the city cost of the city versus high revenues and low costs and so the project will land somewhere in between so what we give is that broad range so it's not a precise science and so that provides kind of a full view of where we could be depending on you know the market economics at the time

Kirsten Lockhartokay so it's more of a revenue consideration than like a anticipation of any specific risks to this property

Brock Hardenstaffcorrect correct same same analysis that's used on on all development projects that come before Planning Commission and Council okay

Kirsten Lockhartand then no one else has brought up the stormwater management and environmental considerations I'll go Can you speak a little bit to what improvements you anticipate are necessary at the site or what you're seeing right now?

Molly NovotnyapplicantI am just phoning friends all day long. I'm going to start, but Eli, oh, here comes Eli. I'll let you answer.

Eli GoldmanapplicantYou want to repeat the question, please?

Kirsten LockhartSure. So obviously we're still looking at a fair amount of surface parking, impermeable surface. So what are you anticipating the needs are going to be for stormwater management? any upgrades or existing influx into the infrastructure that's already there.

Eli GoldmanapplicantFirst, I'm Eli Goldman. I'm civil engineer at Land Design. So the existing site is mainly impervious, as you know. So of our disturbed area, which is about 5.2 acres, we're actually reducing the amount of impervious by about a third of an acre. So that's going to reduce the amount of runoff leaving the site. So we analyzed actually three different outfalls for the site, we've calculated the runoff for each of the three outfalls and we're reducing it for all those outfalls. And in addition to that, for water quality, we're providing a jellyfish filter that's going to treat about two and a half acres of our site area that will clean the water before it heads off site.

Heidi Wrenpublic commentAll right. Thank you.

Kirsten LockhartAnd then my last bit that I'll share is more of a comment than a question. But obviously, I don't think it would come as a surprise to anyone that I've collected a lot of individual feedback on this particular project in the last several months. the temperature seems to be a concern. It's brought up dually as height and density, but sort of given a hypothetical of would you accept less green space in exchange for lower density over a larger area, most people say yes, which I found really surprising because I thought that the concern would be more of the circulation and traffic. But it really does seem that the six story at the corner is a real pain point for the community. So I mentioned that just

kind of for the record is that if I were to kind of rack and stack the feedback that I'm getting, biggest concern with with density and traffic falling significantly below on the on the list so just sharing that for the for the comments and with that I'll turn it back to you sure further

James Feathermr. McCarthy

Tassos McCarthythank you as a follow-up you're not going to use real page are you going to use any kind of algorithmic are you guys manually setting rents or Are you going to utilize Yardie Rev IQ?

Molly NovotnyapplicantYeah. Let me pull our specific commitment to let you know how we're doing it. We have language. Sorry. I don't have jittering here. Oh, I missed a page. Sorry. Okay. So for the, we've said that we will not utilize RealPage or any software platform or service that employs anti-competitive algorithms. So we've made it broader than just RealPage.

Speaker 26Good evening. I just wanted to add also previously for Scout, we did do that manually. We did our lease up probably for the first five years on that one before switching to a rental software. clearly seen what's happened in the market and want to kind of stay away from that combined properties um so we do plan on doing this um you know kind of in-house internally for the project thank you

James Featherum mr schweiger since give you time to get up you'd mentioned feedback from probably this body as well as council about concerns with density can you review the density numbers we'll be looking at with this project relative to some of the other projects in the city for us. Or�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������

Matthew RiceSo there's a pretty good density table three in your report.

Clara SwirestaffI've got it. Yeah, I just was trying to find it. It's a long thing. Okay. the density there's no required density for this property because it's in the transition overlay district but the proposed density for phase one is 30.5 dwelling units per acre and then in phase two it would be double that so 60.9 is there anything else you wanted me to go over like some comparisons that's

James Featherother recent projects

Clara Swirestaffyeah so probably the best one to compare and the most obvious would probably be the capstone so that's directly north of the site it's a smaller site so that's six point one five acres it's two hundred and seventy five units and so the density is forty four point seven for that proposal. The Davies property, that was one that was recently approved, also has quite a much smaller area. That's 2.69 acres, 276 units for a density of 102.6 units per acre. And so it kind of falls in the mid range at full build out at 61 Units per acre and at phase one it would be Way below any of the the densities that we that I've studied for this project.

James FeatherThank you Mr. Rice had an interesting thought comment about making some kind of safer pedestrian connection from the Safeway for example, the pad site. I think it's a great idea, but I think I'm probably safe in assuming that a constraint on doing that is the lease you currently have with Safeway and what you can do with that parking lot in the interim. Is that correct?

Molly NovotnyapplicantYeah, Safeway does control that entire parking lot.

James FeatherYeah,

Paul Cunninghamokay.

James FeatherI think a lot of things that had been on my radar JUST GENERAL THOUGHTS, BECAUSE THIS IS A PLANNED DEVELOPMENT, HOWEVER, THERE ARE NO PRESCRIBED, I THINK WAS IN THE STAFF REPORT, NO PRESCRIBED HEIGHTS, DENSITIES, ET CETERA, BECAUSE THE PLANNED DEVELOPMENT GIVES US A LOT OF FLEXIBILITY AND OPPORTUNITY TO BALANCE THINGS LIKE DIMENSIONAL STANDARDS, DENSITY, AND SO FORTH WITH OTHER BENEFITS TO THE CITY, WHICH I DO SEE A NUMBER of them being provided and certainly the generous contributions that combined properties, I guess demonstrated by its track record in the city anyway, have committed to other benefits to support schools at a rate that may be unprecedented per unit from what we've seen in forever.

And obviously that's more and more important as we're facing our school renovation projects right now. But there's also ongoing tuition costs and so forth. the benefits to the potential undergrounding of utilities. Mr. Cunningham may be right. If we didn't start it with previous projects, it's a question when it would happen. Nevertheless, it is a contribution to the city. I presume provided with some constraints that it's used for this intended purpose, but that's not for us to determine. But otherwise, I don't think, I think other things that have been on my mind have been already discussed. Anything else on the commission at this point? Okay, so this is a public hearing. We will open the public hearing for comments from the public.

We will acknowledge that we've received quite a number of emails up to this point on this project. I'm confident the commission has seen those and digested them. but we're certainly welcome to be open to comments here at the meeting as well. Madam Clerk, has anybody signed up to address the commission? Yes,

Speaker 9we have some sign-ups. The first is William Fournier.

James FeatherMr. Fournier.

William Fournierpublic commentGood evening, commissioners.

James FeatherI should point out that we have three minutes.

William Fournierpublic commentYes. I'm William Fournier, 101-3-4 Spring Lake Terrace. summarize why this application should be denied. Reason one, the housing density for this project is actually 81 dwelling units per acre based upon the actual property associated with the building. Using the entire parcel for this calculation is misleading. Current zoning is 24 units per acre The comprehensive plan maximum is 48. Reason two, phase one results in a decrease in commercial space. This is counter to the benchmark in the small area plan. Reason three, the building is taller than surrounding properties and it is much closer to University Drive than the other buildings. The building is massive and not in keeping with the area.

Reason four, this is just a big housing project that does not provide a vibrant location like those that are shown in the small area plans. Please deny this application. Thank you.

Speaker 9Thank you. Next is James Gillespie.

Jim Gillespiepublic commentGood evening, Chair Feather and members of the Commission. My name is Jim Gillespie. I reside at 3604 Colony Road. That's just off of Blenheim Boulevard, about a half a mile from this project. I'm here to speak in support of the project because it is an attractive and beneficial addition to our community, mainly because it addresses our desperate need for housing. For that reason, I would also suggest that the ADU requirement of 6% that for this project be raised to 10%. That would be an additional 11 or 12 affordable units in Phase 1 and another 11 or 12 affordable units in Phase 2. The employees of Courthouse Plaza retail businesses would benefit from additional affordable units on site, as well as those of a nearby nursing home, library, fire station, police station, two schools, and the senior center and child care center soon to go into the Willard Sherwood Center.

I'm going to quote just a few statistics from a February 10th report to the Board of Supervisors. That's the county, but that is the larger community in which we reside. By 2023, the county will need an additional 45,000 to 95,000 homes. Between 2013 and 2023, the county added 43,000 jobs and only permitted 20,000 new homes. that's 2.1 jobs per home 1.5 jobs per new home is considered the ideal standard and and we are the only community the fairfax falls church community with over 2.0 jobs per home the supply of rental homes only increased five percent between 2013 and 2013 2023 and the shortage of homes affordable at low and moderate incomes, below 60% of the area median income, is particularly acute.

So, again, I strongly support the project. I've lived in this community for over 30 years. I think it would be tremendously beneficial. However, I think there is an opportunity for us to get just a little bit more affordable housing for the folks who will be working within walking distance Thank you.

Speaker 9Thank you. Next is Matt Baird.

Matt Bairdpublic commentThank you Planning Commission for your time. The Commission and City Council have to ask themselves a question. How much development in Fairfax is too much development. This project, Combined Courthouse LLC, would be the death knell for Old Town Fairfax. It would completely ruin this part of town. I have lived in Old Town since 1974. I think I've got anyone in this room beat. What was once a quiet part of the city is now consumed with endless noise and stress. In the Fairfax Muse, we never had a problem with crime. Well, since the flats went up. We do now. And the kids from Mason and the Flats raced their cars with modified exhausts up and down University Drive until two o'clock in the morning. Putting a college dorm right next to

a residential neighborhood was a flawed idea. And now you want to develop out this part of the city again. 600 new apartments. Hmm. Well, don't get fooled. The small area plan is for four stories, Not six. And three or four trees does not a park make. And what I thought was really interesting is the lack of cars in any of the plans. It's not like three cars. Well, we know that's not going to happen. We don't need this monstrosity in our backyard. Many believe that city council for too long has served the developers rather than serving the taxpayers and voters of this town. And this is an expensive town to live in. I have two radio shows with over 5 million listeners. And right now, I have to advise anyone who wants to live in Fairfax or move here, you might want to reconsider.

Burke is not endlessly paving itself into oblivion. Many people that I talk to feel that city council does not care about residents' quality of life or our property values. Planning Commission, this project will ruin our old town feel. We have Civil War and Revolutionary War buildings here. Did you know that George Washington created the first militia here, here in Fairfax? And the first shot of the Civil War was right here in Fairfax. Don't pave that over for mediocrity. We also don't need the endless destruction of any more trees in Fairfax. What they did in front of Fairfax High School where I went to school was abhorrent. All those trees gone. Planning Commission, please deny this project.

Old Town deserves better than this complete disregard for Fairfax's historical significance in our country. Thank you so much.

Speaker 9Thank you. Next is Emily Bresson.

Emily Brissonpublic commentHello, I am Emily Brisson, 4123 Orchard Drive, and I really appreciate your time, not only tonight but considering the whole complicated issue. I am of the mind that a couple of people have talked to tonight that I moved into this wonderful town because it was small. It was quaint. It had personality. I just loved it. And so many people who live in and around Fairfax City are just desperately discouraged that it is being overly developed. It is zoned for 48 feet, as has been mentioned at this point, and it was zoned commercial retail. We put those zones into effect to avoid what's happening now. We don't want to drive down a canyon of six-story buildings. I just feel like we're being run over.

all the old residents who really appreciated Old Town, it's going to be paved and mosaic districted all the way from City Hall through town. And it is incredibly, incredibly discouraging to us. We're very much against it. Many of us are. And I just would really encourage you to vote against this because I think it would be better really good retail center there it would feed into the old town the main street old town retail beautifully and if we had some extra retail here that was thoughtfully planned thoughtfully put forth we could really augment the many of the really struggling businesses on Main Street, which is what we'd like to do because it's all walkable between this lot and Main Street.

So I too am of the mind that I am just really hoping you will not approve this. Thank you very much.

Speaker 9Thank you. The last sign up for courthouse is Douglas Stewart.

Douglas Stewartpublic commentGood evening. I'm Douglas Stewart. I live in 10822 Maple Street in the Westmore neighborhood. And my wife and I have lived in Fairfax City since 2004, the same house. And we love to walk to downtown and enjoy all it has to offer. Woody's. There's a new, seems to be a new restaurant every day at the place, every year or so, 21 was, but we love them all. And Courtyard is still our favorite. Anyway, I am just up here to support this rezoning application. Over the years, it's been unfolding. It's improved in numerous ways. The city has worked with the applicant to get this closer to the vision for Old Town North and the small area plan. Along the two interior streets, the sidewalks are wider, the proposed building frontages

are more attractive to pedestrians, and there's more landscaping. Along University Drive, the streetscape will be much more pedestrian-friendly than it currently is and will have more articulation like the stoops that are going to be added along the buildings or in front of the buildings. The open space design plans are more detailed now and include provisions that the applicant will manage them well. I have a lot of concerns about the application. I think the apartment building is too big, not necessarily too high, Actually, I'm just not concerned it's too high. I think it's just too big. The massing is a problem. I would like to see less space given over to parking. Building so much interior structured parking is really expensive.

And those costs just get passed on to tenants and result in higher rents and less affordable housing. I'd like to see the applicants shave off a few feet of the building on each side to open up more space for the good stuff for all of us. sidewalks, more public space, more landscaping, more native habitat, more trees. I realize this is a push and pull, and the city has been working on these kinds of details with the applicant for the past several years, and that the proposal has improved in these respects. I'm also concerned about displacing popular and successful local businesses. It's a big part of the city's appeal for a lot of people. But I appreciate that the city has worked with combined to improve the plan for relocating the current businesses and for making its ground floor retail space more accessible to local businesses through reduced rents, through binding commitments.

So it's a really good step forward. While the open space plans look good in the renderings, it takes a lot of follow through and creativity to translate these into vibrant public spaces. There are a lot of pretty places in Fairfax City. really not very well used. And I hope the same fate doesn't meet these green spaces. I'd love to see the city work with the applicant to program our great public events, program these spaces into those events. I'd love to see some connections between hot yoga across the street or other yoga businesses or the dance company that's there now right across the street, a current tenant, to have programs at the new park. And finally, I appreciate the city's pro for prohibiting the use of price fixing tools

like RealPage. So in conclusion, this is far from perfect, but it's improved a lot. Thank you. Thank you.

James FeatherNo other sign-ups? No other sign-ups. Would anyone else like to address the commission? Please come forward and state your name and address for the record.

Josh Stantonpublic commentThank you, Planning Commission. My name is Josh Stanton. I am a somewhat more recent transplant to the area than some of the speakers that have come before me. My family has only been in this area since 2010. We've lived in Vienna. I work in the city of Fairfax every day just across the street. in the strongest possible terms in support of this project. I believe I would be one of the single young people that Commissioner Cunningham spoke about. And I will say that as one of those people, I grew up in Northern Virginia. I love Northern Virginia. I am currently trying to leave Northern Virginia as fast as I can because it is simply impossible to live here. There is simply not enough affordable housing.

It is not close enough to any amenities to make it worth my while to live there. And while I would love to put down roots here and to continue to live here going forward, I simply can't. It is these single apartments that give rise to people who can go forward and move into houses, move into larger apartments down the line. Without that transitional period, I cannot afford to remain. One of the other speakers previously also talked about crime. Part of the work I do across the street is in criminal defense, and I can say that if the commission does care about reducing crime, approving this project is the single best thing you could do. Every day in my office, the clients, the biggest drivers of crime I see is poverty.

It is homelessness. It is not having access to the resources you need and not having access to any way to improve your conditions. If there is not enough housing here, that will continue, and it will only get worse as the years go by. Perfect is the enemy of good, and there are changes that the commission has expressed, that previous speakers have addressed, that I very much agree with. I would love to see more ADUs. I would love to see less parking space. realities we have. Frankly, I would love it if this project were taller and more dense. Yes, Fairfax has a great historic character. I love the historic character of the city of Fairfax, but we have to address the needs of today. And if we do not have more people coming into this area,

being able to live here, then all we will have in this town is a ghost 50 years hence that nobody can afford to live in. Thank you. Thank

James Featheryou. Are there others? Seeing none, we'll close the public hearing, put this matter in the hands of the commission. Commissioners, any other comments at this point okay what I will do is introduce a motion for the Commission to consider if we have a second

Douglas Stewartpublic commentbased

James Featheron the public convenience Welfare and Good Zoning Practice with respect to rezoning application Z 2600137 which has been filed for the land known as 10300 Willard Way and 3922 Blenheim Boulevard and were particularly described as tax map parcels 57-2-20-004-D and 57-2-20-003-A. I move that the Planning Commission recommend approval of rezoning application Z-26-00137 to rezone the subject property from CR Commercial Retail and CG Commercial General District plan development mixed-use while retaining the transition overlay district to allow the development of the subject property in compliance with the master development plan and commitments which have been prepared and submitted by the applicant is

William Fournierpublic commentthere a second it's

James Featherbeen moving seconded any discussion on the motion mr.

Kirsten Lockhartchair I'd like to introduce for the Commission's consideration as alternate motion with a recommendation for approval with conditions that the height special exception not be permitted at the council review

James Feathersecond we're going to consider that as an amendment to this it's actually an alternate motion that's sorry I

Kirsten Lockhartenter it for I enter it for discussion as an alternative would

James Featheryou like to say more about it MS.

Kirsten LockhartSure. So we do have the option in submitting our motion for approval to request consideration of specific aspects of the Master Development Plan. So this would be specific to the height and density proposed in the Master Development Plan and the associated special exception for height.

James FeatherMR. So special exceptions are outside the recommendation point of view.

Kirsten LockhartCorrect. But the height is part of the Master Development Plan.

James FeatherMR. Mr. Gabbne?

Daniel DrummondMr. Chair, may I ask a question?

James FeatherI have a question for Mr. Nafiets or Mr. Hardin at this point. Or Mr. Stottson. While they're moving, go ahead.

Daniel DrummondYeah. What is the practical effect that this motion passes?

James FeatherWe have one motion on the floor right now. That's

Daniel Drummondwhat I'm saying. If this motion passes, what's the practical effect of it?

Brock HardenstaffIt would be part of the recommendation that the Planning Commission is making to the council. But as noted, a special exception in and of itself is not under the purview of the Planning Commission?

Kirsten LockhartYeah, that's why I said specific to the Master Development Plan with regards to the associated special

Brock Hardenstaffexception. The Master Development Plan is under the purview of the Planning Commission, so can make a recommendation on that. Yes. And

Speaker 12Mr. Sarko. Does this assist or makes it less

Matthew Riceclear? In the past,

Speaker 12the Planning Commission has made a recommendation with a number of caveats. This seems to be a fair caveat or condition to your recommendation that, you know, should the Planning Commission believe that the rezoning and the master development plan should move forward with the recommendation of approval, that the recommendation of the body is that height be limited to something other than what's shown.

James FeatherOkay. And

Matthew Ricewhat is that something? The smaller data plan says six stories. Our rules are 48. Is that correct?

Speaker 12That's correct. Today's height limitation comes from the transition overlay district, which is overlaid on top of feet then the small area plan recommends up to six stories okay

Matthew Riceso we have alternate sort of rules versus what we've already passed and recommended in terms of the small area plan that says on this parcel six feet is our six stories is okay

Speaker 12I think that's fair and you'll have a conversation later under mr. Napti about this very type of subject yes yeah but

Kirsten Lockhartjust for purposes of The current restriction would be 48. The proposal is 72. Up

Speaker 12to 72, yes.

Kirsten LockhartWould a maximum height of 60 sort of

Paul Cunninghamin between? 48 is fine.

Kirsten LockhartBeing the temperature of the dais. 48 is fine.

Paul CunninghamOh, wow.

James FeatherWhat's the height of the flats?

Brock HardenstaffIt's five stories. I don't know. Pull that up. Do you have it handy?

Clara Swirestaffso the height of the flats is seven stories no no no that's the wrong one five stories 64 speed

Speaker 12so irrespective of the number of stories the use standard for a mixed-use building is 12 foot ground floor nine foot other floors going up the applicants off by an inch or so which is in this case, 57 feet is what the actual ordinance would require if it remained at six stories. Just some numbers for you to consider.

Daniel DrummondMr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman. So what I'm trying to understand is, and I appreciate what you're suggesting, but I don't know if the applicant can come up for this, but the whole reason I think they recommended 72 feet, because the economics of the project is dependent upon those 72 feet. So I'm curious. That's why I was asking what the practical effect of this would be. In other words, is it sort of a way of saying, recommending, of course, we're not approving, we're denying, basically saying you can't build this project because you can't get the height limit down to a certain level. Because if I understand it from their proposal, the academics of it are based upon the size and scale of that.

James FeatherMr. Botney is shaking her head positively.

Daniel DrummondOkay. I just wanted to understand that because that's the practical effect of what we would be doing. You

John Regan Jrapplicanthave a two

Paul Cunningham-prong approach here where you do phase one and then we come back to do phase two and adjustments can be made on phase two or all sorts of things can be done with phase two The only reason phase two is there is to say that I intend to do something. True. After I get done with phase one, which is a standalone project. And then in eight years, we'll come back and we'll talk about phase two. And at phase two, there's no reason you can't go to 10 stories or 12 stories if that is the tenor of the times in making those kinds of adjustments. So what we're really dealing with is phase one now. and part of the process is to say that we're offering phase two from the developer so that that will encourage us to do phase one without knowing what we're getting in phase two.

We have something that's been proffered, but there's no guarantee that any of it or all of it will happen.

Daniel DrummondRight, and I appreciate that. I have similar concerns about the height, size, and scale. I just am trying to understand what the practical impact of this would be if it was recommended in the City Council was to accept our recommendation Sure, I think that helps answer the question.

Kirsten LockhartNo, that's a fair question And I do understand the economics of it I believe like what I'm trying to get out in proposing the alternative is we've heard the feedback that the street level or the street side Height and massing is a concern and so is placing a height restriction on the street side facade of the building in line with what the small area plan would have originally called for sort of a way forward for this proposal to gain community buy-in it may be untenable which is not really the intention of putting forward as an alternative so I am willing to withdraw as well what I'm trying to get at is a recommendation that from the Planning Commission that sort of acknowledges the temperature of the room and puts forward things for

City Council to consider

James Featherso would you be okay sorry

Matthew RiceI think in withdrawing what we could do certainly is make a recommendation that the university frontage be limited to 60 feet and that's you know halfway between you know what our code permits and what the small area plans shows it would achieve some benefits that were mentioned by one of our speakers about the massing on the university side and having a small setback on the university side of one floor would would be significant I think the comment about the parking in the structure and reductions of the parking and the structure would certainly may be looking at that I think most of us are okay with reducing parking I think obviously that's a sales point for renters but I think we don't need to

over park in this part of the city and we want to encourage walking them so that's a lot more than we needed in that may not help but I think accepting some height modification on the university side would be perfectly fine with me I'm

James Feathernot an architect but I kind of doubt that reducing one story just alone University Drive will have much significance on the parking structure just a hunch what's required to support the rest of it mr. punny and

Paul Cunninghamif you're withdrawing your motion I will withdraw my second which is what it allowed to be discussed it needed the second before we could even discuss it so I will

Kirsten LockhartAll right. I appreciate the discussion on the dais. I will withdraw the alternate motion at this time.

James FeatherAny other discussion on the motion? Take a roll call vote. I'm not sure which is going to go. Mr. Rice? Aye. Mr. Blackard? Aye. Mr. Cunningham?

Paul CunninghamNo.

James FeatherMr. McCarthy?

Larry Weaverpublic commentAye.

James FeatherMr. Drummond? No. All right. Chair votes aye. The motion passes. 4 to 2. Thank you. We will plan to move on to our next topic unless you would like to take a short break because we'll have another extended discussion. Sorry? Folks, how do you feel? We're going to take a short recess for a health break.

Jim Gillespiepublic commentThank you.

Heidi Wrenpublic commentThank you.

Speaker 26Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank

James Featheryou. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, we will resume our meeting. Next order of business is a public hearing for the gallery at City Center. This is a public hearing for 4085, 4101, 4103, and 4117 Chambridge Road. The applicant E. John Regan, Jr. seeks to replace approximately 119,000 approximately 934 square feet of office with a mix of office retail restaurant and apartments in three buildings on 3.86 acres the applicant is requesting a zoning map amendment from co commercial office to cu commercial urban while retaining the old town fairfax transition overlay district and approval of a general development plan with proffers welcome mr frederick

Speaker 5good evening good evening everyone this is a public hearing for Christopher Lynn LLC the applicant is John Regan jr. the plans for tonight it's public hearing or submitted on September 28 2026 the applicant has submitted a zoning map amendment from commercial urban commercial office to commercial urban district while retaining the transition overlay district and approval of the general development plan of proffers for three buildings to include up to 394 apartments up to 29,000 393 square feet of office up to 7,000 460 square feet of retail 616 structured parking spaces 11 surface spaces and four parallel spaces on 3.87 acres the applicant has also requested a special use permit for multifamily in the commercial urban district and several special exceptions

as well as a major certificate of appropriateness for architecture and landscaping the Planning Commission will only make a recommendation on the rezoning and the general development plan the subject property is located and University Drive across from this across from the Fairfax County judicial complex to the west a two-story office building in the activity center to the north and east of the site a single-family home when the activities place center type to the south that property is known as the Davies property which is previously approved for an upper-story residential mixed-use building with up to 276 apartments and office and retail on chambered road and finally a across to the east side of the site is a three-story townhome community

the applicant has assembled four lots of approximately 3.87 acres the existing properties have approximately 120,000 square feet of office space with 445 parking spaces so draw your attention to the aerial in front of you uh chambers road 4085 chambers road is a five-story building facing chambers road with seven stories to the rear of the site four zero four one zero one chambers road is a two-story building fronting on chambers road with three stories to the rear to the site moving for the south is for one zero three Cambridge Road looking at a six-story building to the rear five stories fronting on Cambridge Road and finally four one one seven which is the bank property is a four-story building fronting on Cambridge and I believe the

backside of that building is actually five stories so just to give some context for the existing properties the existing building coverage is approximately 39 39 percent the existing lot coverage is approximately 83 percent and the existing tree canopy for the property the existing property is right at 10 percent the small area plan the smaller plan envisions recommends the existing offices be renovated new ground floor level engagement on Chambers Road consolidation and development into commercial uses recommended for the property a residential not use the residential use is not recommended and then you have an existing offices plan for across the street at the Fairfax County judicial system complex in terms

of the map series the subject property is locating activities in her place type the Old Town small area plan was adopted in June of 2020 the current zoning is commercial office with a proposed zoning of commercial urban within the transition overlay district the upper story residential mixed-use use is a permitted juice in the CU district and the TOD looking at the general development plan the applicant proposes to develop three buildings with up to seventy four hundred and sixty square feet of retail twenty nine thousand three hundred ninety three square feet of office space with a private street that's ready east to west from University Drive to Cambridge Road that private Street is 26 feet in width and the applicant is providing a north south

greenway between building B and building C connecting to the northern property line consistent with the small area plane building a building a is at this location here did it running on chambers road building a is proposed as 72 units with 7,460 square feet of retail slash restaurant along chambers road as well as an additional 10,699 square feet of office on the ground floor fronting chambers road the applicant is proposing a second story on the second floor additional office space for approximately 14 000 square feet building b building a connects to building b crossing over the private drive building b consists of 154 units with 4 342 up a square feet of office space and as well as some amenity space on the ground

floor the remainder of the building is residential on top this building is approximately 70 feet max height and measuring at 66 stories building C which fronts on University Drive is a standalone residential building comprised of 164 units with amenities within the building, swimming pool, and courtyard, as well as a fitness center. The proposed building height for Building C is approximately 76 feet in height and six stories with a step back at Level 5 and Level 6. So, again, the applicant is proposing a private street running east to west, a 26-foot private street with parallel spaces on the north side as well as a loading zone on the south side of the private street the access points from

Cambridge Road is right in and right out while the access point to University Drive is a full access opening the applicant has provided two levels of Within these two levels of structured parking, the applicant is proposing 616 parking spaces. And also, there's surface parking, a small parking lot to the north side of the proposed drive. The proposed private street has 11 surface parking spaces. And once again, the applicant is providing four parallel spaces adjacent to Building A. for a total of 631 parking spaces exceeding the parking requirement of 621 spaces the applicants provided 40 bicycle parking spaces on site and has met the loading requirement of two parking space or two loading spaces the

primary pickup location for garbage is off of the private street so in the the garbage location was at this access point off of university the applicant has relocated that to the private street based on conversations from staff and also planning commission and city council so in terms of the existing building coverage the applicant is providing approximately 56 percent voting coverage which is well below the maximum requirement the same with the proposed lot coverage the acts the applicant is providing a lot coverage that's below the maximum voting requirement so we're looking at 79% for a lot coverage the applicant has provided tree canopy coverage meeting the required canopy coverage of 10% the applicants providing 10.19% as

well as providing on-site underground stormwater facility so the two areas you see in the screen outlined in black is for the underground stormwater facility in terms of the green space the smaller plane recommends a minimum 43 feet shared greenway service area running north and south through the property the applicant has provided that space and has provided a width that is greater than 43 feet on average the the largest width is approximately 80 feet and the narrowest point is around around 40 feet so they're providing a greater distance on on site for the greenway and the pedestrian pathway that's running see on the next screen so here's what the applicant has provided so again like I mentioned it's varies in width at 39 feet to approximately 70 76 feet the

paved surface area is 15 feet so the applicant has met the intent of the small area plan in terms of providing the greenway connection so here's a vantage point looking at building a from the greenway on the left side of the screen and then on the right side looking at looking towards building B briefly cover the changes from the Planning Commission work session to to the plans that are before you tonight the garbage location has moved from from university side to the entrance the main entrance from the east-west access drive the arrow show is the location of the garbage dumpster location the service parking lot has been reduced from 15 spaces to 11 spaces the size has has been reduced and a number of spaces has has been reduced the applicant has also

provided additional plantings around the service parking lot to provide from the greenway the number of floating spaces has been reduced since you last saw this application at the work session back in June from three spaces down to two spaces the applicant has proffered two units for first responders that's been an update since you've seen this project and finally the fitness center the fitness center shown in the left side of the screen and second submission was larger and more visible from the fourth floor the applicant has reduced the fitness center and set it back so it's not as prominent within the submission that's before tonight the applicant has proffered to mitigate light pollution from this fitness center the properties of business facilities shall be provided

windows and or automated blinds shades as necessary to mitigate light pollution staff has recommended approval of the zoning map amendment from commercial office to commercial urban while retaining the old town Fairfax transitional overlay district the next steps for this application is BAR public hearing on November 4th that's next Wednesday and a city council public hearing is set for December 8th and I'll stand by for any questions that you may have and the applicant has a presentation as well.

James FeatherAny pressing questions for staff? I invite the applicant to come forward, please.

Dave McElhaneyapplicantGood evening, members of the Commission. Chair Feather, thank you for the opportunity to speak. On behalf of the applicant, my name is Dave McElhaney, and I'm pinch-hitting this evening. Clark Massey usually does our presentations, and I've always admired his low voice. He sounds like I'm in church, and I just have to feel goodness about him. So the pressure's on this evening. I'm joined this evening by the applicant, John Regan. of the development team with me as well, including the architect and the transportation engineer and our landscape architect to help assist me in answering any questions. So collectively, John and I are going to walk you through this. I'll try to be brief, as usual.

Fred has done a splendid job in terms of presenting. So understand the time is short, and we'll jump into the presentation. Next slide, please. This slide we showed you before. I would just emphasize to you again one of the challenges associated with our project is the elevation difference from Cambridge Road to University is approximately a 26 vertical difference, so we've really worked hard with the architect his creative team To figure out how to facilitate that elevation difference and then of course take in staff comments and others to address that and And so our latest plan hopefully is satisfactory in terms of how we've been able to manage that big elevation difference. Of course, we've got the Davies Project Tour South, which was approved.

Although following through with staff's suggestion, we went ahead for the most part and represented our plan as if Davies was not developed. So we kind of looked at it both ways, but kind of looked at it in a worst-case scenario. And so a lot of the slides you'll see this evening show without Davies, but we designed it so it works both ways. Can you see these screens back here, please? And as you may recall from our presentation from back in June, Christopher tried diligently to acquire the rust property. we were not able to do that but fortunately we were at we were able to add 4117 to the assemblage and that took several months but fortunately for the betterment of the project in this part of the

city that is now part of the application so since June what changes have occurred those have already been outlined to you I am just going to focus on some of the main items and before I really get into that One of the things, based on what I heard from the last presentation, is I wanted to make sure folks know that this application is proposing to underground the utilities, both on University as well as on Chambers Road, just to make sure that everyone's clear in that regard. So this particular slide, and it's so much easier when this screen is right in front of me, so I don't have that benefit here. So it really highlights some of the important changes that I think, from your standpoint, would be important to recognize.

Again, as pointed out by Fred, we have relocated the trash pickup area. We heard from the citizens. Certainly we heard from staff and planning commission and town council to revisit that particular location. And so it was a great idea. we did it that is now accessed off of the private roadway you have been sure it has been shared with you that we did reduce the number of loading spaces you may ask why and that's tied into the reason why we also reduced the motor court size it's all to enhance the greenway that much more we really are excited about the greenway Fred stole my thunder he showed those really pretty illustratives and we were really asked by town council to revisit that and so during our meeting with him in July it was suggested that we go back and look

at that we also heard the same thing from staff and we're glad that we did it it's made it a better project if you go to the next slide that is going to actually show you the old versus the new and if you look carefully in red represents what it looked like before. It's approximately 1,500 square feet or so that we've been able to now transfer into the greenway. There's four different blocks that are shown, and the only reason why I put those on, there's a lot of information here. There was a question as to, well, does the motor court still need to be the size that we're currently proposing? And so Really what we did is we went through and did an auto turn analysis, making sure that anyone that's parked in the motor court is able to get out.

That's really the purpose of what's in yellow. The red represents the old, the new is the tan, and the yellow represents just how those turning movements would work with vehicles to make sure they can get in and out.

Paul CunninghamNext slide, please.

Dave McElhaneyapplicantThis was a slide that's been updated since we last presented to you and we're really proud of this When you take a look at the total total usable area that's associated with our greenway And that includes the greenway area and then the areas that are shaded in blue those are publicly publicly accessible areas We're about about 32,000 square feet Just in reference, when you compare it to what the Davies property had, they were considerably less. We're about three times more than what they had. I will also share with you, this doesn't even include the square footage that's associated with the pool in Building C, the bottom right corner of building, if you will. So when you kind of add up all these public spaces, it's about 25% open space.

And that's usable open space. that's not the narrow strips between the sidewalk and the street and so forth that's usable and we're really proud of that so I really just wanted to emphasize that and let you know again this is even more than what we had presented to you last time so if you want to go to the

Paul Cunninghamnext one

Dave McElhaneyapplicantactually if you could go back one please John if you could point out the crosswalk One of the questions that was raised, I think, from the Commission was, can that crosswalk be a raised crosswalk? We have redesigned that crosswalk. It's now a paver-raised crosswalk. That is now in our proposal, and that is something which, again, is reflective of some of the changes and so forth that we've made. As represented by staff, in their staff report, there's no outstanding issues, and again, And we're really, in that collaboration effort, we really feel that we tried to listen and tried to be responsive. And I just wanted to make sure I emphasized that. I think what's also important, and we've heard a lot of feedback about the architecture of this building, of these buildings.

And we're going to show you kind of what we had and presented to you in June. And then we're going to show you, and we'll summarize very quickly, what those changes were with our most recent submission. our architect.

TomapplicantThanks, Dave. Good evening. Just to quickly summarize, what we're looking at here, this was what was submitted back in June and we got some general concern from several different groups about kind of turning the corner towards Kelly's smaller, you know, more of a residential appearance building. And so this corner. John, can you give me the next one? Yep,

John Regan Jrapplicantthere you go.

TomapplicantThank you. So at the lower two floors, we continued the red brick from the center section of that piece of the building and turned the corner with it. It runs back about, let's see, 35 feet along the north frontage of Building A. And along with turning the red brick around the corner, we changed the scale a little bit by breaking down the two-story storefront that is kind of the standard across the main elevation into more of two floors. So we have kind of the appearance of punched windows on the upper level and brought the scale down a little bit on the first floor. Additionally, we added some detailing, some banding to your typical heads and sills and a water table to, again, we're trying to work towards bringing the scale down on that corner

as we transition to the more residential further down the road. Let's see, John, can we? Wait,

John Regan Jrapplicantgo back. That's what looked like originally?

TomapplicantYes. and that's where we've transitioned to. All right. So now we move to the University Drive Elevation, which we've spent a lot of time looking at, and staff has certainly spent a lot of time looking at as well and working through some of the challenges, shall we say. the June elevation that was presented and John you want to give me the next one there we go part of part of our goal was to carry the the look of kind of townhouse residential look that exists that we had set up on university to turn back on the sides. Obviously this is this rendering shows what would be the the access road through Davies and what we did was basically there were there were some key elements to that the redesign on the back here. We changed the

the base brick or the base from a cast stone.

Justin WallaceJohn can you flip back one?

TomapplicantHere we We had cast stone at the ground floor level, large ashlar stone that, while common with an urban townhouse, not so much on disassemblage. So we brought scale down, went to a beige brick because the beige base was kind of consistent throughout. I'm sorry, John. Can you hear me?

Larry Weaverpublic commentBack there.

TomapplicantYeah. So we went to the beige brick on the first floor. We had the red brick set up above already, and we were able to turn that back, and it runs back to the entrance to the greenway on the first floor there. And then the recommendation from staff was let's try and mitigate the base a little bit because along the drive to Davies, the base was feeling rather tall, and so we brought the balconies and the architecture from the upper floors down one level to break up that base a little bit. Let's go on to the next one, John. This is our straight-on shot from university, And you can see this shows the entrance when we were accessing the trash from university. And it had a large impact on that elevation.

John Regan JrapplicantGo to the next one, please.

TomapplicantOkay. So we were able to bring down, by relocating the trash access to our private road, we were able to bring down the entrance by 10 feet. Bonus for everyone, really. It worked out beautifully. We got an additional unit, but also it made the entrance much, much less apparent on university. So the bulk of the work was at the bottom and at the top. The middle pretty much stayed the same. We, again, added or went to brick at the ground floor. And then the big changes at the top were we lowered the height of the fitness room. It was approximately 16 feet from the fourth floor to the roof, and now we're at 12-7. So we pulled it down a considerable amount. Additionally, we changed the color palette, went to more of the beige tone because it kind of disappears.

There's a vertical rhythm that happens with the main frontage, and the lightening of the material and lowering of the roof line help to really make that kind of disappear along the university frontage. Okay, so here we have heading up our private drive. And again, we wanted to turn the elevation back and kind of soften the transition to the rest of the building beyond. Okay, John. The brick change. the three levels of brick, the detailing from the townhouse back to the side, an additional 25 feet deeper into the site, and pulled some of the bay detailing off of the front and attached it to the balcony detailing on the sides. That's the predominant changes to the architecture in our most recent.

Dave McElhaneyapplicantThank you, Tom.

Speaker 1okay let's keep going

Dave McElhaneyapplicantthis particular slide was one as a result of feedback that we've got from a couple of different parties and we really thought there was concerns from the adjacent community about privacy if somebody's in the fitness facility is the privacy of those that live in the townhomes going be affected. And so we put a drone up in the air. We went to the exact elevation if somebody was on a treadmill and was looking out of our proposed fitness facility, what would they see? And so we went through that effort and what you'll see in the top right corner is the actual view taken from the drone. We've got a lot of footage but the bottom line is is that that's looking straight out as if you're on a treadmill.

The red represents the parapet level. So basically anything from the red and below, you do not see through that. Everything above, you see it. And so based on what you're seeing there, you can see really anyone that's sitting in the fitness facility is only looking at rooftops and beyond. They're not looking through the windows of the townhomes. And so that was a question that was raised. We didn't know how else to do it, but we put the drone up, and it was actually a great idea. about that in terms of how that turned out. Just moving on in terms of in general with regard to our project significant increase in tax revenues. It's currently assessed at $17 million with our proposal based on our cost

estimates that are in place we're about a hundred and seventy million dollar project. This results in over 1.8 million dollars in tax revenue and so we really think that that's substantial, obviously, compared to what the current $200,000 tax revenue is. When you look at our proposal with regard to walkability, as this slide shows, we scored at a very walkable score of 86 with our proposal. Bike score is a 74. Affordability, we've heard a lot about that based on the previous case and also in some other discussions that we've had and so forth. Based on reports that have been prepared for this particular project by John's consultants, the median age for this particular project is going to be folks that are in their mid-30s and so forth.

When you are looking at income needed and so forth, this project hits the mark. if you just proceed to the next slide, John. Walkability from the Judicial Center. We're estimating that's going to be about 2,000 jobs when that's fully built out. Where are they going to live? We're right across the street. We really feel like we're going to serve a need for sure. So in conclusion, we've tried to, again, be responsive as best we can and listen to the citizens, listen to the Planning Commission, listen to staff, listen to town council, adjust plans as appropriate. And we feel like we've been able to accomplish that, you know, based on the staff report that's been put forward. We're making a significant contribution to schools.

Before, when we were in front of you, we were only offering $600 per unit. We have increased that to $1,600 per unit, a substantial increase. What we also are doing now is, well, we had the 24 ADUs that were proposed before. are now including two first responder units that will be free rent no no no rent charge whatsoever collectively with the with the increase in the tax revenue and again the other changes and benefits that I've shared with you previously we're really excited to bring this to you for hopefully for your recommendation of approval with that I'm going to go ahead and stop and be happy to answer any of your questions thank you commissioner

James Feathercould

Kirsten Lockhartyou please speak to the operation of the site i know we talked about this when you were here in june across the three buildings there's obviously one trash pickup site so how does trash get from three buildings to one pickup how does mail get delivered for three buildings just what does day-to-day look like at this complex

Dave McElhaneyapplicanti think i'm going to let tom briefly reply to that He can give you a lot of information on that. He's better sooner than me.

TomapplicantLet's start with the trash pickup. So generally in each building there's a trash chute per building with a trash access room on each floor and at the office and the retail area as well. They dump into a trash room located at the upper garage level the P1 level of the garage and presume, depending on the pickup schedule, but probably twice a week, the containers would be relocated from the trash rooms to a trash pickup area that's adjacent to where the trash truck pulls in off of the access road. and the trash men would load them, put the empties back, and the building staff, they would be moving those trash carts. As far as the mail goes, the mail primarily will be located in the amenity area in Building B.

There will likely be package rooms for deliveries in each of the three buildings, smaller ones in A and C, and then a large package room in Building B, where the main amenity space is.

Kirsten LockhartAnd where do those deliveries take place?

TomapplicantPardon me?

Kirsten LockhartHow do the deliveries take place? On the private drive? Yes,

Tomapplicanton the private drive and through the loading dock or the loading spaces are just adjacent to where the amenity and package room would be located.

Kirsten LockhartNext question is once again going to be about stormwater management because I know it was sort of a bit of a surprise I think during the previous hearing that the stream at the end of Breckenridge is in fact above ground like with our actual groundwater, stormwater with with runoff across university is that are things that can be done to mitigate that on this property or absolutely remain a concern

Dave McElhaneyapplicantabsolutely um right probably when fred had the um exhibit up that showed our vault but john if you just want to point out where the vault is actually it is shown there um currently as you may or may not know there are no storm water management controls in place nor are there any water quality improvements in place this proposal will treat uh the entire both from a detention standpoint as well as from a water quality standpoint. We're designing this such that we are controlling the one-year event, the two-year event, the ten-year event. And so all the runoff that's coming from our three and change acre site is now going to be controlled in a vault, and then it will be slowly released into the storm drainage system.

And as was pointed out in the city's presentation, there's more imperviousness on this project than there will be after we develop it. So that's going to be also a benefit in terms of reduction of flow. But we are proposing an underground vault that is going to take care of at least what comes from our property.

Kirsten LockhartAnd just two quick things I want to confirm. First, there is still no sidewalk on the south side of the property. Is that correct?

Dave McElhaneyapplicantWe spent a lot of time going back and forth as a team about that. There are no doors or entries on that south side except for one location in the bottom right and where it is, kind of hard to zoom in, but if you see in the bottom right there's a blue line that goes to a door entry. Otherwise there's no access points on that side of the proposed roadway adjacent to Davies. There are no crosswalks either on University or on Chain Bridge that abut that particular location. We really feel that our pedestrian movement proposal in terms of the proposed walkway locations certainly is a vast improvement from what's there now. And then when the rust property develops, they will finish a sidewalk on the north side

that will help facilitate pedestrian access from their site to the greenway. So we've tried to set the greenway up so that it also works for the Ross property as well.

Kirsten LockhartAnd then my last question, for the garage exit onto University, am I correct from the renderings that's coming up at a slope as you exit the garage?

Dave McElhaneyapplicantFrom the garage entry into the private road that goes to University?

Kirsten LockhartNo, so where you replace the trash pickup with the garage exit. a slope to make an exit onto University. That

Dave McElhaneyapplicantis correct.

Kirsten LockhartHas anyone looked at the visibility constraints of that entering?

Dave McElhaneyapplicantHave you been talking to the transportation department?

Kirsten LockhartWhat is a relatively over sped road?

Dave McElhaneyapplicantSo let me let me let me talk about that a little bit and I don't have the slide up here but we had a portion of our meeting with staff was focused specifically to the question that you just raised. I responded back saying yes we've provided you site distance specific to the automobiles. They said, well, what about anybody who's on a trail, anybody who's on a bike? And I said, it's a very good question. So we have not, we have submitted within the last week an updated site distance analysis based on 15 mile an hour design speed for a bicycle. And we exceed the site distance requirements. We also have highlighted the proposed vegetation there is. So if we put the landscape, well, you can kind of see there from a landscape standpoint,

we made sure that the sight lines would still work with the vegetation in place, not just the trees, but also the shrubs. And so that has been looked at very closely, and staff will have an opportunity to review that with our final submission. But that's something we definitely looked at as a result of comments back from transportation.

Kirsten LockhartI will say, as someone who lives off of university, it can be difficult to make a left turn from a stop sign in a clear corner. Coming out of a slope out of a covered garage seems precarious to me. Sure. That's my questions for now. I will cede the floor.

James FeatherBefore I move on, are those all turning movements allowed for that garage entry? Left, right? That is correct. Yes. Thank you.

Daniel DrummondThank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you so much for the presentation. Thank you for all the time and effort you've been in this. Just a few questions. Two of the four office buildings are occupied, is that correct?

Dave McElhaneyapplicantWe'll yield to John.

John Regan JrapplicantYes, sir. Okay, and

Daniel Drummondwhat percentage are occupied right now?

John Regan JrapplicantTo the best of my knowledge, I believe it's somewhere between 50% and 60%.

Daniel DrummondAnd what do you anticipate will happen to those tenants when they go?

John Regan JrapplicantSome of them have relocated. to, you know, one of them went to the Rust property and some of them went to the Sager and University buildings. It's similar

Daniel Drummondto the kind of discussion we had before about what happens to the tenants. I recognize it's a commercial property, so it's a bit different. You have it here. Another slide had a better view showing the Davies property.

William Fournierpublic commentCan you

Daniel Drummondspeak a little bit about how you plan on coordinating construction and timing vis-a-vis the Davies property, considering that's a pretty condensed area?

Dave McElhaneyapplicantYeah, we've met with representatives of that application. There are a lot of common infrastructure improvements that will be necessary. That includes the undergrounding of the power. That includes potentially some storm sewer. Oh, one of the things I failed to mention is we had an outstanding issue last time about the off-site sanitary sewer improvements. No longer an issue. We've committed to improving that, but we'll work with the Davies because they also had a similar commitment. It really boils down to the timing and when Davies goes. I mean, we are catching up with Davies. Davies has not yet prepared a site plan. We have obviously gone through the rezoning process. It's our intent to move forward with the site plan if this application is approved.

And so we are in constant dialogue with them to keep them apprised of our progress. If they go before us, we have agreements to work with them to give them easements in order to do their work and vice versa. So, obviously, we don't control them, but there is a working relationship between the two applications, between the two developers.

Daniel DrummondAnd that's a good follow-up. As soon as everything worked in your favor, all the approvals come across, what's your timeline?

Dave McElhaneyapplicantI'll yield to the applicant. Great.

John Regan JrapplicantIf we get approved, it would take about a year for site plan approvals. The biggest issue, and it relates to the Davies as well, is the current interest rate. I mean, the current interest rate is 7%. Right. And that takes a lot of projects out of play, making them approved, but that comes down to math. And if the interest rates improve over the next, let's say, year and a half, then we're going to push straight into construction and build this project. Okay. I think the other thing you did to do what Dave was talking about on the Davies, we know that along this edge, and if you can put the Davies property in your mind's eye, we might, whoever, they're higher than we are. So if we go first, then we may have to put in some type of shooting and shoring

and do some elevational stuff. We will match up with them. point out Davies was done by the Chantilly Office of Urban Engineering. Dave is in the Annandale Office, so they will be coordinating. But whoever goes first may have to have some temporary things in place to play with it.

Daniel DrummondAnd on that note, how high is the Davies property going to be? What's constructed? How many stories? Sorry? I don't know. Five, six, five? Six, seven. All yours.

Speaker 5It was five stories.

Daniel DrummondFive stories. And this project once complete will be how many? Six on 123. So then if you could go to the drone picture. By the way, I thought that was very innovative, very creative. It's an interesting perspective to look at the city of Fairfax that way because I don't think most people see that.

Dave McElhaneyapplicantA little side story real quick. So we had a visitor while we were doing this work, and it was the fire department. They asked for our drone license. And, of course, we had it, so we were all fine. But nonetheless, we got a little bit of attention from the fire department.

Daniel DrummondSo say I'm a resident of Breckenridge. Right. And you're probably anticipating this question.

Speaker 1Yeah.

Daniel DrummondAnd I come walk out, and I look up. Am I looking at 76 feet, or am I looking at 93 feet? In other words, if I'm looking at the top, so if I'm, say, the opposite of this drone image, and I'm walking, and I'm on university, am I truly looking at 76, or am I going to be looking at 93 feet from grade?

Dave McElhaneyapplicantSo when you look at the top of the parapet which is associated with where that red line is that is ‑‑ I'm estimating here I don't have the exact numbers. That's roughly 50 feet. 50 vertical feet from on the opposite side of the roadway. On their side of the roadway looking back at us. About 50 feet up is the parapet associated ‑‑ John, Can you, can you, sir?

Daniel DrummondI guess what I'm trying to get is if I'm on university and I get the chamber of elevation, but if I'm on university and I'm, I'm looking there and crossed the street from, you know, Breckenridge, what is the tallest point? I think that's building C, correct?

Dave McElhaneyapplicantCorrect. Yes.

Daniel DrummondWhat is the tallest point I'm actually looking at? Cause I think it's some of the, some of the,

Dave McElhaneyapplicantwell, why don't we go to the, go to the

Daniel Drummondelevation. Yeah, we'll go to the elevation. Some of the comments we've received from the community have raised this issue and I just wanted for you all to address this.

Dave McElhaneyapplicantCorrect. So that is about from the Breckenridge view right there. So when you look at the top of the parapet, John, point out the top of the parapet. That's from their side, okay, not from our average grade planer or anything like that, but really what's the elevation. That's approximately 50 feet. I just roughed it here. to that line that John just outlined, which is the closest to Breckenridge.

Daniel DrummondWhat about the, if I'm looking to the left, it looks like there's

Dave McElhaneyapplicantfour

Daniel Drummondwindows.

Dave McElhaneyapplicantYeah, that's further back. I know, yep. Okay, and I want to say that's like about, I don't know, plus or minus 100 feet back. But that is the portion of the six-story building of Building C, if you will.

Daniel Drummondor is that? So

Dave McElhaneyapplicantthat's going to be approximately at that location I would say roughly 78 to 80 vertical feet if you will from the Breckenridge side.

Daniel DrummondCorrect and again I'm looking at it from the university perspective.

Dave McElhaneyapplicantCorrect. Not from the judicial center perspective.

Daniel DrummondThat's from the average grade plan.

Dave McElhaneyapplicantOh okay. The 75 is from the average grade plan. I'm taking the average grade plan out. I'm just saying if someone is standing on the sidewalk on the opposite side of the road I'm trying to answer you directly in terms of what that elevation is. But

John Regan Jrapplicanthow far away from that sidewalk?

Dave McElhaneyapplicantYeah, so I'm estimating that is going to be roughly 100 to 150 feet further back from University to that tall portion of the building. It's pretty far pushed back. As we've said, we've kind of transitioned the heights and stair-stepped them down as you go from Cambridge to University.

Daniel Drummondthinking being you're trying to reduce that canyon effect, if you will, on the university side, if I'm looking at this correctly.

Dave McElhaneyapplicantYeah, this is a good, go back to the other one, go back to the other one. This is even a better one. So that right there I think is a pretty good picture of how that looks from the side in terms of its relationship to the Breckenridge. Got it.

Daniel DrummondOkay. Thank you very much.

James FeatherOther news? Mr. McCarthy, anything? Mr. Cunningham.

Paul CunninghamThank you. You made a comment going through that as the government center redevelops, they're looking at adding 2,000 people roughly in there. You made an additional comment that you would expect the demographic of this unit, of your 394 units to be people in their mid-30s. Is there a range in there? And do you have a sense of what the demographic of the building would be?

John Regan JrapplicantWe just know the average age would be, you know, 39. And we think there'll be professionals. You know, somebody asks in a citizen meeting, you know, we don't want, you know, college students. Well, under fair housing, whoever applies for an application, I can't turn them away. Will there be some students in there? Possibly. But again, as Dave alluded

Larry Weaverpublic commentto it,

John Regan JrapplicantFairfax County Board in 2024 approved four buildings, their smallest one being 90 feet, the tallest one being 130. It is 400,000 square feet of office. So if we just did the math off that saying there'd be 200, an employee takes up about 200 square feet. That's about 2,000 new employees just across the street. So we're hoping that they walk across the street, live in Fairfax City.

Paul CunninghamOkay. that could be a good place for our previous speaker from the previous one to live in and

William Fournierpublic commentwork across the street or

Paul Cunninghamsomething. If you're looking at people essentially late 30s, one and two bedrooms, how many children are we expecting in that area? My sense is that when we keep talking about the 25 to 40 year age group. They're all going to be single, they're all going to be saving up money to buy their first house. They're all going to be doing this, except the 25 to 40, in my recollection, and it may have changed, are the prime childbearing years. So if you're going to have kids, you're probably having them someplace in that range, as opposed to waiting till your 40s and post or that many people having any number of children much before 25. So how we get into the number of students we would expect and the kind of demographic

we're dealing with.

Speaker 5It's been estimated that this project would generate 43 students. Okay.

John Regan JrapplicantWell, there was a debate there. There was between 43 and 45.

Paul Cunningham43 to 45.

John Regan JrapplicantGive or take the age of a renter.

Paul CunninghamOkay. That's a useful number. I know we keep planning that, and every time we close down an affordable housing unit, we find out that for 40 units, we get rid of 26 kids, which skews that with reality as opposed to the planning figure. So it's trying to assess where in that middle ground it's going to fall. If you've got that middle ground of people and they're all living in this, They've got some open space to go outside, which is commendable. It's great for the project. Working at home has become a thing since COVID. If we've got a lot of people in that demographic that might want to work from home, are there any technical amenities being added to the building to allow them to do that? Because I know working on an iPad from home probably doesn't get it in a highly technical world.

something more robust in the way of access to internet or or whatever along that line to be able to to productively work

John Regan Jrapplicantwell I'm glad you asked that we built a couple multi-family projects after the pandemic one of the things is one bedrooms you have a little niche area that you'd probably know that you would do a team's meeting from or work from on a two-bedroom we'll try to put in dens that you can have you can work from that area also in a lot of our the newer projects that are being proposed there are work areas again down on our first floor we are going to have a large amenity area some of that could be office little office nooks that people we have that in a project that we have at 701 North Henry Street in Alexandria it has four little areas that you put your computer in and and use it from there and these all three of these

buildings being connected they will have high-speed internet and then high-speed internet availability both on the fitness area our amenity area and we're also going to activate one of the things that we really want to happen is we want to activate this area on the roof for an open, you know, to be active so you can overlook 123 for parades and things like that. So we think a lot of this activity area would be not only the surface area but on top of the roof. I think it's going to be a special project for the

William Fournierpublic commentcity. it

Paul Cunninghamexcellent thank you very much appreciate that

Matthew Ricethat's right very good I'm appreciative of the efforts that you've made to listen and make changes and it's it's a good sign the interior crosswalk with a raised surface good touch we need to make sure across that private road that we the people see that connection from beyond they make a choice to walk that central corridor between chambers and University is really sort of the hallmark of this part of our small area plan so you've done more to respect that Greenway in terms of the width and the amenities then you know that our applicant to your south that really initially planned it as a place to haul the garbage dumpsters out and if there's anything that you know is more symbolic of their consideration of that central corridor than planning it as

their trash pickup area I don't know what is so you've gone above and beyond how does one access the stormwater vaults underneath the surface being an HOA head I know I have to keep the covers of those available and open and Yeah. You know, 24-7. How would the two different vaults be accessed?

Dave McElhaneyapplicantYeah, so those are something that we would detail out during the final design, but they are going to be absolutely accessible from the Greenway. There will be access covers for us to be able to bring in a maintenance crew. There will be more than one. But they will be located in such a way that they will be hidden to the extent possible in terms of just strategic and creative landscaping and so forth. But absolutely we do need to provide access so those can be maintained. There is no parking structure underneath that particular location. that greenway north of the proposed roadway the east-west private road is that is not provided with underground parking in that particular location the rest of the site is other than that location so the only way to access it is

from the top

Matthew Riceyeah okay good I'd want to make sure that you know beauty of the greenway and the amenities you have there are interrupted by sure some Necessary infrastructure. Yep. I absolutely love the first responder units You have you know 30 40 people working in various shifts right across the street station three They'll be overjoyed to hear about something like this. It's real hard to retain young professionals doing things like You know fire and EMS response because of the housing issue. It's just a real challenge, and so that will be greatly appreciated. I like the analysis of the lighting from the fitness space, and I'm sure the folks at Breckenridge will appreciate not having bright lights kind of broadcast down on their community.

The egress from the parking garage on the university being sloped is a problem that they're going to have to deal with as well. the scourge of my middle age is these LED headlights and once you flex the angle up just 10 or 15 degrees it's like staring at you know the Sun you know burning brightly against my retinas I dislike generally designs where the cars are paws they're facing upward because it's gonna that LED glare is just a nightmare even in regular street settings some anyway something to think about but I do love the fact that that exit point is now a little more discreet and it's not it obviously gives you another unit so I think that's a win-win there's still obviously a concern about the private street

and parking on the private street I know that you have parallel spaces on the north side you have bays that people can pull in

William Fournierpublic commentbut

Matthew Riceyour delivery drivers your uber eats and door dashers they do not care and they will park everywhere in the world that you don't want them to park I think the last thing we want in this area is you know advanced towing or Dominion to come rolling through you know hooking cars every 30 seconds. But that's going to be a challenge to keep parking in check on that central corridor. What are your plans to deal with that?

Dave McElhaneyapplicantWell, Commissioner Rice, one of the things that we've been asked multiple times, can you just get rid of the motor court? And for multiple reasons, we don't want to get rid of it. One of the reasons is why you had just communicated. We know that we need places for people to pull over, for pizza to be delivered, for an Uber or what have you. Obviously, some people will be using the loading spaces for a quick drop-off and in and out and so forth. But, you know, we hope to have a very nice 6,000-square-foot restaurant there, too, and we want to at least have some spaces that are available for some of those patrons to utilize. You know, we toyed with the idea of doing perpendicular parking directly off of the private roadway.

And, you know, similar to what we did with the loading spaces. But that we thought was not a good idea because of the turning movements that would be going in and out of the travel ways for that east-west traffic we thought would just be problematic. And so we had to strike a balance. and we we feel like you know um we did come down on the size of that motor court a little bit we did reduce the number of parking spaces we do know that there are advantages of having more parking up there again you've alluded to some of them but at the end of the day we're trying to find that sweet spot

Matthew Riceyeah i advocated last time for reducing the size of the motor yes so i i'm not I'm not complaining about that I'm just signing that there's got to be some outstanding signage design and some other things in play to avoid chaos I

John Regan Jrapplicantthink what I think one of the things that we could look at is in those two look like I don't think if someone's moving into one of these buildings those loading docks are not going to be used they'll be used during the day if somebody's dropping if a pizza delivery guy is dropping off a pizza we can probably put signage says you know for move-in deliveries including and they can and that's big enough for a 39 foot truck so that you know a delivery truck a direct delivery car for a pizza who's gonna go into that lobby the lobby right here yeah he's gonna probably he's you know can do that right down the street or if a parking space we could put a signage here for one of them as being you know 15 minutes or 10 minute parking

along this edge right here and that could that could also help us a little bit there too

Matthew Ricewe'll look at

John Regan Jrapplicantthat

Matthew Ricethe last issue i it's not your fault but that south side is just as disappointing as It's a byproduct of the developer to the south refusing to put in sidewalks, getting a no vote from me, getting specific responses from me about this. It's extremely problematic for us to require you to atone for the sins of your neighboring development. But man, that is not a single doorway, isn't a feature of that South Street. it's a problem that area is completely unactivated there's no movement of people there's just cars um

John Regan Jrapplicanti just to reiterate or to agree with you 100 we see the christopher companies i've been doing this for 43 years and i have to say i we see this this project as a partnership between the communities that are around us and you know to the city itself so we that's why make recommendations we we have a debate over okay we can do that or can't do this that's why the that's how you get a project looks like this

Matthew Riceyeah we and we discussed the south side last time it's just still as problematic as it gets and just the view shed frankly from the unhappy Breckenridge folks is gonna have that south facet of the building right there so it's you know it's we can't magically change, you know, what was approved to the south. Yeah, go back one time.

Dave McElhaneyapplicantOne more. Yeah, that's the best elevation we have to show that. No, we understand. It's been a challenge. And there's advantages and disadvantages. You know, the advantage, obviously, is we can't put landscape there. If we put a sidewalk there, then there would not be enough room. They proposed the road right to the property boundary.

Matthew RiceYeah, I know, and we had the same discussion last time. It's either landscaping or it's a sidewalk, and I don't know what's the lesser evil, but it's just unfortunate, and I think there's very little we can do to go back into a negotiation phase with the Davies folks, but it's having a street like that on the south side is a problem to me so

Speaker 5I'd like to add one thing to that Commissioner Rice so if the Davies does not get built and let's say the applicant puts in a sidewalk there would be lots of trees the canopy calculation wouldn't be they would go below the tree calculation for the 10% so they would be losing out on on tree canopy cover and also at the same time we had a discussion with PD having a sidewalk back there would actually be a good say a safety concern if that if Davis doesn't get built so if there's so if it's if they put a sidewalk in Davis doesn't get built it's basically like an alley and there's no eyes on the street it you at night it could be an issue so PD had a concern about having just a sidewalk there and so it's kind of a trade-off so you have to you know think about those

things so yeah we we definitely had a conversation is what would be more critical and safety is definitely an issue if you put a sidewalk there with with nothing else

James FeatherI'd like to understand one thing. In the proffers that were provided to us by staff and attachment 10 contribution to schools is documented as $600 per unit. You said something different this evening. What's the right

John Regan Jrapplicantnumber? In the staff report it said $600. That was what actually at the time we wrote the, when the staff report was first issued, was it $600 per unit? And we talked to staff, and we sort of had a long discussion, and we increased that to $1,600. Okay, so what we have in the

James Feathermaterial for the meeting is not up to date. Okay. I just want to make sure. Yeah. Because what I'm reading, what was provided to us, what I heard tonight were

Dave McElhaneyapplicantdifferent. We just submitted that last week. Right. So that is a commitment on the October 22nd proffers, which I don't think was in your package, because your package went out before then.

James FeatherPackage came out

Daniel Drummondon Thursday. So

James Featherthese proffers were dated September 28th. We got our package a couple days ago.

Speaker 5Yeah. Right. So if

James FeatherI just want to make sure I understand. Yeah. So

Speaker 5the applicant will have an opportunity to update between now and council meeting so you see the update there we couldn't update it within the 21 days of the hearing that's right

James Featherso

Speaker 5yeah

James Featherokay thanks from my perspective I appreciate the changes that I've seen here related to the fitness center space that helps to address the concerns of the neighboring community. Ultimately, we'll see how it really looks, but renderings are kind of hard to actually translate to reality. But it's good to see that you have responded to some of those concerns that were expressed. Still a pretty dense project. I mean, still 102 dwelling units per acre. That's

John Regan Jrapplicantpretty

James Featherthick compared to some of the other ones that we've done recently and the ones we've heard about. I know it's in the same ballpark as Davies. It's not totally clear where that project is going, apparently, at this point anyway. But that concerns me. And of course the consequence of that is the overall mass of the building is pretty large. I do recognize you made some improvements to the architecture. I'll get to hear that again next week since I'm our Planning Commission rep to the Board of Architectural Review. It'll be good to be a part of that discussion as well. but how this building looks, particularly off Changebridge Road, it's pretty large from there. If there's a place that should be able to accommodate it, it's probably there.

We don't have any idea yet what's going to happen at the judicial complex site. They have ideas, but this also does create an opportunity, as you indicated, for the city to take advantage of some residences to support what the county does. So there are definitely trade-offs here as well. Let me look at my other notes. Again, as usual, a lot of the

Douglas Stewartpublic commentthings that are on my mind have already been raised, so

James FeatherI'm not going to bother repeating them. Go to this other document. Oh, yeah. The other thing that concerns me, of course, is the loss of the office space. I'm not discounting the building that's already vacant based on the numbers that were in the statement of support. My math shows you're about 80% occupied and the three that actually have tenants. That sounds like viable office space to me. Maybe some consolidation or whatever to get the occupancy rates higher. But I think that's a concern considering the small area plan didn't envisage this being developed in the residential in the base case. So that concerns me about this project as well. It wasn't necessarily a question. It's an observation.

But feel free to speak

Dave McElhaneyapplicantto that. Fair enough. I think that the applicant may have some additional feedback in that regard.

John Regan JrapplicantI just was trying to confirm the actual occupancy. myself right now it's somewhere in the late 60s early 70 percent yeah

James Featheri made the numbers based that what we're providing the statement of support maybe it's not current but across the four buildings i get a number in the 60 to 65 percent discounting the already vacant building it's higher higher than that based on the numbers that were provided in the statement of support sounds pretty viable office space to me that the city could use uh we continue to have concerns burdening residents, homeowners with tax burden, and we want to keep the commercial that we have. This sounds fairly viable. Maybe it's not the best, but it's probably not as bad as some of the others in our neighboring areas. But that continues to be a concern considering, again, the small area plan didn't envisage redevelopment of the residential in this part of the city,

William Fournierpublic commenton the Cambridge

James FeatherRoadside. I don't have any other comments or observations other than those that have already been made. Mr. Grubman.

Daniel DrummondThank you, Mr. Chairman. You raised a really good point regarding commercial. You stated previously that this would have, we would get, for the city, sorry, would receive $1.8 million in tax revenue. First of all, I want to make sure I heard that correctly. Second off, that's per annum. If what Mr. Feather is saying is true, which I believe it is, that we have roughly 80% occupancy, are we giving up tax revenue by going from commercial to residential?

Dave McElhaneyapplicantBased on the numbers that were provided for me, and I will share with you that, again, we're pinch-hitting tonight. Clark Massey, he's a real estate expert. He's our consultant who specializes in these type of topics. The current assessed value of the buildings within this assemblage is $17 million. So when you look at what that translates to in terms of real estate tax revenue, that's approximately $200,000 per year. When you look at what the obsessed value of this project would be at its completion, it's approximately $170 million. So utilizing that number, the projected tax revenue is roughly a nine times increase up to $1.8 million.

Daniel DrummondOkay, thank you.

James FeatherMr. McCarthy.

Tassos McCarthyA question I have for staff. The previous applicant had the chart of where we hoped the small area plan would shake out, move into, what was it, 52% apartments. You know, we're talking about 600 and whatever, 630. We're talking about 900 or something units. 12,500 square feet of retail at the other project in phase one, lose some office here. Just to make sure we're, you know, keeping benchmark here, are we keeping track of where the proposed mix, what we've already approved and what we're talking about now, just to make sure that we're kind of, that graph that got pointed to earlier is actually coming to fruition.

Speaker 5All right. So if I understand you correctly, staff is tracking along with the projects and what's coming on what's potentially coming online and what's going off so yeah we have a mechanism to keep track of of the mix of projects and mix of uses and what's what's and how it's meeting the projected short term and long term and I believe do you have that mr. Navigate

Paul NaptystaffI don't have the exact but in Old Town particularly looking at residential considering all the projects that have been submitted not just those that are here tonight those that are in the pipeline those have been approved we're reaching the point where it's reaching the point of what the smalling plan anticipated would occur by around 2035 in terms of number of units which is 1,250 in terms of office the smaller plan anticipated an increase of 25,000 square feet over that time which is not very much but as you know we are starting to see a loss of that and a retail the smaller plan anticipated an increase of 60,000 square feet over that time as well and that's remaining relatively flat in some places we're

losing some and bripples like this we would be gaining retail so

Tassos McCarthythank you and I'm sure you guys are tracking that I don't doubt it but I think it might be for us if we could, as we kind of continue to look through projects, use that as like a benchmark to what we're hoping to get on future development.

James FeatherYeah, I agree. And there's still properties that we expect to see redevelopment on. The Rust Building was mentioned previously, and the former Truist, or the Truist Building there now, and some others that we're getting

John Regan Jrapplicantpretty

James Featherfull.

John Regan JrapplicantThe one thing I think we didn't point out to you is in this building, I think we pointed out lightly, we have about 7,700 square feet of retail, and then we have about 29,000 square feet of office inside this building. So when you add it up, it's 36,000. We are taking 120 out of play and putting 36,000. We're keeping 36,000 square feet of it.

Tassos McCarthyCertainly, yeah, and I appreciate that. I think you've done a good job, as has already been mentioned, kind of taking some of the feedback we last said. It's less specific to this and more of just a comment for staff as we continue to move forward, that we're thinking about that a lot.

James FeatherAnything else? Okay, thank you. So if this is a public hearing, we'll open the public hearing. And Madam Clerk, do we have any sign-ups for this?

Speaker 9Yes, we have one sign-up. It is William Fournier.

James FeatherThank you. Welcome back.

William Fournierpublic commentHello again. I'm William Fournier. Living in Country Club Hill since 1978. This project should be denied. Reason one, the project results in a decrease in commercial of 80,000 square feet. We talked about that, and I think it actually turns out to be a little bit more decrease. Reason two, residential density of the three buildings is 101.8 per acre. The zoning amendments that are going to be talked about next call for a base density of 48 with additions from community benefits. This project does not have that much benefit to get density that high. Reason three, the building is higher than the Translation Overlay District and the Small Area Plan. And we've also talked about Chambers Road looking massive and significantly closer to the road.

I don't think that was mentioned. They're closer to the road than the existing buildings. Fairfax City's small town character is being eroded by these large projects. In the email that I sent out that you read, I mentioned that, and I'd like to read this, there are certain locations where redevelopment is needed. Just look at Fuddruckers. For this project, there may be alternatives to just knocking everything down. A combination of renovation and redevelopment may be doable in light of the large amount of space that is currently a parking lot. If the developer were to consider not making this a large housing project, there could be a way to provide affordable housing, structured parking instead of underground parking, and mostly commercial rather than getting rid of the commercial.

James FeatherThank you. Thank you. Are there others who would like to address the commission on this matter? Please come forward. You first. Thank you. Please state your name and address for the record.

Larry Weaverpublic commentMy name is Larry Weaver. I live at 10551 James Rimway, Chantry Square. I'm the president of the Chantry Square Homeowners Association. I've been a resident of the city for 30 years. My house has paid off next month. So having said all of that, our objections fall into three categories. First, traffic. I've heard a great deal of discussion about the walkable city. American towns and cities were walkable until the advent of the automobile. Until we can kill the automobile, we have to take it into account. When you add the Davies property and this domino and the next domino to come after it, because there is one clearly coming, you are dramatically increasing the traffic on 123, which is already a parking lot during rush hours in the morning and the afternoon.

Second objection, long after the developer is gone, the residents of my community are going to be expected to help pay for the mistakes of this decision, and specifically on the issue of traffic and other infrastructures. We have in fact had a big tax increase a year ago and this is going to drive a future large tax increase as well to pay for the mistakes of how to deal with the traffic. And the third point that I would make, I'm probably the only trained historian in this room, okay? One of the reasons I moved to Fairfax, much like the gentleman said in the previous discussion, is because of the historical nature of the town. I have a picture of the Fairfax raid hanging over my fireplace. Half the people in this room probably don't even know what the Fairfax raid is. The bottom line is, is what we are doing with each of these dominoes is building a series of apartment buildings that look like every apartment building in America.

and we're going to destroy the historical nature of downtown Fairfax without any consideration to taking into account of what legacy we've been given here that we should pass on to the next generation. Thank you.

James FeatherThank you. Please. Again, please state your name and address for the record.

Josh Stantonpublic commentThank you. Once again, Josh Stanton, thank you for your time. I will say, as a member of the newer generation, what we want is cheaper housing. Please and thank you more than anything else. The historical nature of Fairfax is very much appreciated. However, I can't enjoy that history right now without a commute, and right now even that is stretching it. I will say I would love to live across the street from the courthouse, but if the median age of this development is 39, I might be waiting a long while yet. That said, I am still very much in support of this project. My main concern about it is how affordable it would be. I'm not quite sure why things like a swimming pool might need to be in downtown Fairfax,

and I know that the private road will cause me to get many cases for trespassing and associated other offenses in the future. However, ultimately, I think those are minor concerns, and I think the biggest thing that will help the affordability is simply just competition in the rental space. The previous project, which I was strongly in support of, my biggest concern was actually that they were the largest private landowner in the area, And so diversifying the people who are building the apartments, making sure that there is healthy competition, I think is the thing that is the beauty of capitalism and will help drive down prices most of all. I will say, Commissioner Cunningham, you did mention unless things have changed, people have kids generally around 25 to 40.

However, because of things like affordability, actually that is changing with every passing year. the age keeps going up and up and up to the point where this might actually be a good place for people who are in that transitional period to live either right before they start a family or right after they start a family. I also heard lots of concerns about losing out on some of the office space here. However, I'm not convinced that the office space is as valuable a use as what it put two. Currently, the graph shown in the earlier presentation had us at 65% office space, which means that primarily the city of Fairfax is not really a city of people, it's a city of offices. And the things we can do to help ameliorate that are beneficial,

especially in a situation where more and more of those offices are going remote, and that high-speed infrastructure would be very much appreciated as someone who does frequently work remotely. Thank you.

James FeatherThank you. Are there others? Ma'am, please. Please state your name and address for the record, or provide it to the clerk.

Heidi Wrenpublic commentHello. Heidi Wren, 10472 Breckenridge Lane. I got the notice that this meeting is going on, so I just came back from work, so I kind kind of like stream, listen to some of the questions, and I'm speaking on the fly and reflecting some of the feedbacks that I back and forth. Number one, I'm against this project. I've been a resident for 25 years. I haven't heard other people talking about historical reason for this town. Living here for over 25 years, I would just say 25 years, really not developing in any character. We always hear the slogan saying we want to be a destination. We want the city to be a destination. If we are building all these massive higher buildings with massive transit younger people come in and out. It's not a destination. It's

a transit town, number one. Number two, for these two projects right close across the over 600 units. I haven't heard anything about expanding any road on University Drive. If anything, the lanes are narrower because you added the bicycle lanes. Okay. Number three, I saw there's a slide about some residents mentioned about privacy and I heard this high drones. My question is, and I really appreciate the question that you asked, my question is, do we have any pictures about what they actually saw from Breckenridge Lane and from the University Drive? I only saw a drawing of an estimate. If we are talking about people's privacy here. We are just estimating 50 feet or whatever feet. That's not acceptable. Okay. I would

like to hear exact measurement. Does the drone have a picture to show what was seen from both sides of the street, from University Drive to Breckenridge Lane community and vice versa? Okay. As a resident, I agree with the other gentlemen on the other community. We developers are gone we pay for the prices we pay for path for for the parking for the traffic or for you know I hate to say this any privacy issues okay and then another point I tried to make is so traffic is one really to to make the city more have the historical characteristics, I'm not seeing it. And really, yeah, okay. Attracting people to come to the city as a destination. I can speak from an international perspective. I have visitors from other countries and I've taken them to other small towns in

Virginia and I have to say Fairfax it's not high on the list it's not very impressive and I can give you a lot of reasons why and these type of projects are really making it even worse thank

James Featheryou

Heidi Wrenpublic commentthank you are

James Featherthere others seeing none will close the public hearing this matter in the hands of the Commission is Is there a motion?

Kirsten LockhartMs. Chair. Ms. Chair, based on the public convenience, welfare, and good zoning practice with respect to rezoning application Z-25-00770, which has been filed for the land identified as 4085 Chainbridge Road, Tax Map 57-4-02-051, 4101 Chainbridge Road, Tax Map 57-4-02-503, 4103 Trainbridge Road, Tax Map 57-4-02-054, and 4117 Chainbridge Road, Tax Map 57-4-02-041. I move that the Planning Commission recommend denial of rezoning application Z2500770 to rezone the subject property from CO Commercial Office to CU Commercial Urban while retaining the Old Town Fairfax transition overlay district and denial of the general development plan with proffers, which has been prepared and submitted by the applicant

because the applicant's proposal as set forth in the general development plan, excuse me, the density of the applicant's proposal as set forth in the general development plan is incompatible with and will adversely affect adjacent properties and the surrounding neighborhoods.

James FeatherSecond. Second. It's been moved and seconded to deny the recommended denial for the application. Is there any discussion on the motion? Roll call vote. Mr. Drummond? Aye. Mr. McCarthy?

Paul CunninghamNay.

James FeatherMr. Cunningham?

Paul CunninghamNo.

James FeatherMs. Weber? Aye.

Paul CunninghamMr. Reynolds? Let me

James Feathercount.

Paul CunninghamThree no's. two eyes

James FeatherI vote aye we have three three and three so the motion fails

Paul Naptystaffmr. chair my understanding is that the whatever deciding factor the Planning Commission comes up with there has to be a positive vote so if you can't agree on this motion then that would be the case is that correct

James Featherthis could move to the council without a recommendation from the planning commission is that all right Mr. Harden I would expect the motion to approve would go the other direction

Brock HardenstaffI think what Mr. Napty is stating, a motion, a vote to the affirmative of either approval or denial is preferable in moving this forward. If the Planning Commission can't take action, we will take that back. But that is the preference always.

James FeatherI understand. And we're 3-3.

Brock HardenstaffAnd

Eli Goldmanapplicantthat's

Brock Hardenstaffthat's what it is That's a suggestion, but if there's not a desire to do that or if we can't do that then the vote is what it is

James FeatherCommissioners any proposal otherwise

Brock HardenstaffNo Okay, is our thank you on action. Thank you

James FeatherNext order of business is a public hearing on small areas planned zoning amendments. This is a public hearing on proposed amendments to the Code of the City of Fairfax, Chapter 110, Zoning, to amend portions of the articles and sections contained therein, including introductory provisions, zoning districts and regulations, site development standards, standards, development review, and definitions relating to adopted small area plans. Mr. Nefty.

Paul NaptystaffThank you, Chair Feather and members of the Planning Commission. I'm here with Justin Wallace from the consulting firm Whitesmith & Cusina who has been helping us throughout this process. We haven't seen them in a while. We had the last couple of meetings we were working on details, but you may recall from earlier in the process. They helped us design the structure and kind of set up the initial draft for us. And so typically when we have these packages of zoning text amendments, we try to walk you through every text amendment, every change to text to give you all the detail that we can. But as you all are aware, there's a lot of text that's proposed to be changed with this. And so we won't be

able to walk through all of it. It is all in your packet though and so what is included in there you have a summary of the amendments that just kind of summarize what we're attempting to do the structure with the new zoning district and all the elements that are included there's an outline which is different from the summary because the outline lists what's changing with each section of the ordinance because it doesn't necessarily fall in the same order as the as the overall summary that we have then we have a markup which is a red line version which shows every text change is proposed both with the amendments and then some associated amendments that we'll talk about in a minute. We provided the markup because we thought this would be easiest to read and kind of

follow what the changes are. Because the official two documents that you'll be taking action on are the ordinances. And these are kind of a black line markup. And they're broken up into two sections. Those that are related to the smaller year plan amendments. And then there are a couple of minor amendments that we are proposing that came about through through this process that are somewhat related to the Small Area Plan amendments, but they're not dependent on them. So when we get to the end, you may choose to support one or the other, but you don't have to support both. They are independent of one another, and I'll explain how that will work when we get to them. So in the end, we do have two sets of sample motions for you.

One will be to act on the Small Area Plan amendments themselves. The other will be to act on the other amendments. And again, the other amendments are proposed changes to the use table to remove special use permits for multifamily mixed use development in most of the commercial districts and to reduce the citywide requirement for general office parking. And so with the presentation that we have now, again, instead of going through all of the details, we're going to ask Mr. Wallace to kind of remind us how we got where we are, to go with the, remind us what the background was, the options that we looked at, and give kind of a high level overview of the structure we ended up with. And then I will walk through some tests that we did on development projects that we have received proposals for in the city over the past 10 to 15 years in activity centers to give a general sense of what this might mean for how development proposals might change if these amendments are approved.

So with that, I will turn it over to Mr. Wells to give us the background.

Justin WallaceThank you, Paul. And good evening, commissioners. Pleasure to be back in front of you. Paul gave a good introduction but I'm going to spend some time talking about the project background how this has come about a summary of our public engagement and a refresh of how we've arrived at the preferred approach with regard to the activity center district that's in front of you tonight hopefully these details will provide you with enough information to ordinance amendments I'm going to start with the general purpose of the zoning ordinance amendment we're simply trying to better align it with the policy the small area plans and the comprehensive plans the city established that vision for the activity centers through its comprehensive plan as you well know and

later developed more detailed small area plans for each of those activity centers this project is the implementation of that a continuation of that process and we are translating that vision into a zoning framework that supports the type of development the city wants to encourage in its activity centers it's important to note that the underlying zoning needs to change in order to match the policy objectives described in the comprehensive plan and small area plans as we've seen with recent projects tonight so the purpose of the project is to improve compatibility between the small area plans and the

Paul Naptystaffzoning ordinance

Justin Wallaceso this map shows you those four small area plan locations the city has invested considerable planning efforts in outlining a detailed vision for each of these areas including Old Town Fairfax, North Fax, Camp Washington and Fairfax Circle. This is where much of the future residential growth is expected to occur but in a mixed-use and walkable development pattern. Although each area is unique with its own identity and context, the Share several common objectives including offering a mixture of uses that complement one another encouraging a more walkable environment and more compact development improving how development incorporates open space and what that means for the city and how buildings

relate to the street through high quality design the new activity center district creates a unified zoning framework for how these areas will develop and change over time. In terms of the project timeline, this project began in the fall of 2024 and has progressed in three major phases. Phase one, the consultant team focused on evaluating the existing zoning ordinance and confirming how it relates to the small area plans and identifying any gaps or zoning barriers. Phase two, in the spring of 2025, we released a strategy report that included preliminary recommendations and a set of tools and strategies presented as options available to the city. We worked with city staff, you all at Planning Commission, and city council to develop a

preferred direction for the activity center district. In Phase 3, we continue to translate those tools and strategies into ordinance language, followed by several rounds of review and refinement. And now we're here at the public hearing stage. And depending on how tonight's decision goes, we anticipate going before City Council within the next few weeks. we have a snapshot of the engagement that has occurred throughout this project it's been important and integral to the activity center district we've held focus group discussions with different community stakeholder groups city agencies and professionals within the development and building industry we've conducted at least four community meetings coinciding with each phase of the project

and reported our progress and updates to you all at Planning Commission and City Council the city's online engagement page has been an important platform to give opportunity for residents to learn and review and submit comments today we've had 48 focus group participants a hundred and fifty two participants signing in at community meetings and substantial viewing and participation through the engage Fairfax online platform so the feedback has been used to identify issues early on in the process shape the recommendations with zoning tools and strategies and refined our drafting and the details in front of you tonight one of the key deliverables of this project was our strategy analysis and recommendations report we released that in May 2025 this report

evaluated the city's existing zoning regulations against the policy and planning documents and through that analysis we identified common issues across all four activity centers and established a direction for zoning implementation at a high level the report recommended creating a new zoning district for activity centers and to reinforce the character of each area through standards such as land uses building fringes height street connections and parking and open space which we'll talk about soon we also explored ways to introduce greater flexibility into the zoning ordinance so the report included recommendations on increasing objective design criteria introducing ways of alternative compliance adding more flexibility and

streamlining the development review process we also looked at ways to ensure that development includes community benefits for example how to create more usable open space how to create meaningful connections and encouraging development to provide more community priorities and so the strategy report Is an important document that establishes a framework to better align with the small area plans offering greater flexibility for staff and applicants and establishing a more predictable development standards and more predictable development outcomes and I wanted to share on the next slide just to refresh that we identified those common priorities and evaluated various potential zoning scenarios or alternatives in order to determine this direction the activity

center district and so this this matrix is just a summary of the different zoning approaches that we looked at and then how they would potentially accomplish those objectives on we explored each each one of these and examined their advantages and limitations and ultimately we We recommended that the most effective framework was creating a new zoning district the activity center district and Pairing that with an incentive based zoning approach to encourage and Kind of set the foundation for those activity center districts And so with that, I'm going to turn it over to Paul.

Paul NaptystaffSo the results of that effort, and I'll say that White and Smith spent the better part of a year after that putting together a draft that encompassed all of the issues that we were trying to work with. So this is kind of the more work-intensive part of the process. We began to be able to share that draft with you all in the early part of this year. And so this summarizes the topics that are included in the draft. And so this is carried forward to today with the final version, although some of the details and elements of this has changed. So what was proposed is that we, as Mr. Wallace stated, creating a new zoning district, calling this the Activity Center Zoning District. This is a district that would not be proactively mapped.

that they would have to go through the rezoning process, receive a review from the Planning Commission, a final action by City Council, and opportunities to use this district would be limited to the defined activity centers. So those areas are mapped and those maps are included in the draft amendments. Any properties outside of those areas do not have the opportunity to use this district. Within that district, these five boxes to the right summarize the key elements that are included. This includes dimensional standards, such as density and height, frontages, includes use design and dimensional standards for how buildings relate to the adjacent streets recreation and open space which will go into more detail we

have unique standards for this district in terms of how we define open space and how it's calculated then we have the community benefits program which is one of the key aspects of this as Mr. Wallace stated the creating a new district was was recommended as a preferred path in conjunction with an incentive-based program. And these community benefits are how we calculate those incentives. And so this new district has programmed in ways for developers to achieve certain thresholds with what they're trying to do in exchange for providing benefits to the city. In Virginia, we cannot require property owners to provide public benefits to the city in in the zoning ordinance in terms of providing land

or publicly accessible spaces. And so this is really the only tool that we have to have numeric standards for how this is included. And then lastly we have circulation and parking. This we set standards here for how parking should be calculated in these areas. Small area plans themselves don't have specific standards about parking but we also have information here about how streets should be designed to support the smaller area plans. So, we've gone through a lot of this information before, and so what I wanted to go through with you tonight is to kind of summarize where we started with each of these topics, what the need was identified back in that early phase before we started preparing the draft

amendments, summarize what was included in terms of how each of these standards is measured, and then lastly look at the development impact. And when I say development impact, this is a very high level analysis with all of the of the proposals that we have received that we use as examples here. We don't actually have the correct information we need because if this district is approved, there will be specific submission requirements. So the applicants would have to provide these calculations for us and show us what is included in each of the calculations. So we just had to make some estimates here. These can't be considered 100% accurate, but I think they are well enough that we can get a general idea of how these changes might impact development.

And we use 14 development proposals that we have received, either pre-application, work sessions on, things that are actually coming into application, things that have been approved, and other things that have been built, other things that have actually been withdrawn and have not moved forward. So, don't take it to mean that these are things that are actually coming forward. These are just things that we had enough information on that we could use to do this analysis. So the first topic is frontages. going back to that phase two summary that Mr. Wallace provided the need that was identified in that phase related frontages but there's a trying to find a way to support the desire from the smaller plans to have more creativity

variation of flexibility in activity centers and prioritize place based strategies with active ground floor frontages you may recall from the smaller plans that there are locations where retail and certain commercial uses are specifically identified as the ideal use on the ground floor so this is our way of codifying that but then not doing it just based on use but also on dimensions in terms of how wide the sidewalk should be how far the building should be from the sidewalk and what the space between the building and the sidewalk should be designed as they're also in some cases where there's some architectural design standards we try to keep that pretty minimal because that's more appropriate for design guidelines but there are a few elements that we

thought were important to include in the zoning ordinance so what this means in terms of development just focusing on this issue just looking at the high level analysis 50% of the projects that we looked at of those 14 would meet the use requirements meaning that they are showing commercial where we the zoning ordinance would require commercial to be 64% of projects are close to the because it means they're generally meeting those requirements but there might be some cases where there is utility or something in the way that that makes it so they can't do it in all locations and these standards this section does include opportunities for special exceptions that's especially because of what as I just mentioned there are anomalies that occur with these

kind of my new details and we wouldn't want that to hang up an entire development project the next topic is open space back in the early phase when we were identifying what the needs were for open space in the zoning standards the issues came up to were to build consistency and give clarity as to what the standards and definitions of open spaces should be there are often concerns about how open space is defined in our current ordinance and actually it's it's plan districts outside of this activity center district. In other cases, what we often call open space really just means impervious coverage. The general recommendation is to add more green space and to represent city values in terms of what types of green space are added.

So the result is the proposed amendments. We have a 10% requirement for open space. This is similar to a lot of our commercial districts. However, it has additional stipulations about what is included. in those open space calculations they must meet certain definitions on top of that each of the definitions for open space in this new district has a weighting to it so the more desirable types of open space particularly those that are either publicly accessible or provide some kind of benefit to the city in terms of natural resources have a higher weighting and then those that have less benefit such as things that are simply utility rights of way or that are private spaces have less weighting to them.

So running this through and looking at our recent development project, it looks like about 50% of them would meet the proposed standards for open space. There are no special exceptions proposed in this draft for open space. So those other 50% would have to make changes to their plan in order to come forward for a public hearing. They couldn't just request a special exception for it. Parking, the summary of need identified in the early phase of this project. There were concerns raised about large amounts of parking that are required and that there are high costs for parking, particularly when a lot of the parking is provided in structured or underground parking. And that we should balance our parking requirements based on looking at our peers.

We are pretty fortunate that Fairfax County had recently conducted a pretty large study over the couple of years before this that gave us a lot of information that helped us inform our decisions on parking. And we initially began with some recommendations to reduce parking requirements for certain uses. And then add an additional opportunity for further reductions through incentives. Where we ended up with is that all of the base rates for parking are the same as in the current ordinance. However, up to 20% reduction can be achieved through certain incentives. Those include through tree preservation and expanding canopy beyond the tree canopy requirement. By providing public parking or providing structured parking.

Structured parking is something that a reduction is already permitted through in our commercial urban district. And so one thing I want to point out here, there are some concerns about parking capacity at certain locations throughout the city and whether or not we should be considering these reductions. So as an example from a residential standpoint, the image on the left is at the point development at Camp Washington. This image is taken on a Sunday morning when we would think that residential uses are primarily using their parking spaces and you can see that the top floor is is primarily vacant at that time this is a four floors in this garage are dedicated to residential uses so this is about 20 to 25 percent of the residential spaces

that are available to this space this aligns with what we heard from a survey that we did with property owners in the city where they identified where this property and the Scout project also identified that the residential permits requested by residents totaled about 1.0 spaces per unit where our requirement is based on bedroom count, but it typically ends up being about 1.5 to 1.6 spaces per unit. The image on the bottom right is in the Scout development on a Friday night. This came up because they were noted that there were concerns about overcrowding of commercial spaces, is particularly where we have sit down dining that tends to be very popular at certain times. And we do have issues in some properties in the city where they are seeing their parking requirements.

The Scout project was one where we have heard concerns about that. I would note that this image is taking in the eastern garage of this development, which is close to the giant. And it's also the side of the development where it's opposite of where most of the sit down dining tenants are. And so if you go to the Western Garage, which is much smaller, that is very crowded and it does tend to fill up. So the issue here we want to point out though is that the issue with this property in particular is not the quantity of spaces, but how it's arranged and how people are informed about where they are allowed to go park. There are other properties I will acknowledge that we do have bigger issues with this.

They tend to be places where there is less retail that can share the parking. Since this is a large development, there's a lot of retail in this. have this excess parking even with those high demand uses. And so that's one of the reasons why having publicly accessible parking is an incentive for reduced parking. So that adjacent properties can actually share parking among each other. And if we do have one particular tenant that has very high demands at a certain time of day, then they can count on other nearby tenants even on different properties. They probably have different demands to offset that. So looking at impacts of the recommended parking changes, as I mentioned our base rates are not proposed to change.

So all of the 14 projects meet the residential requirements. There are four projects in Old Town that would not meet the commercial requirements. This is because there are reductions that are already permitted for commercial uses in the transition overlay district that are 50% of the required parking. With these amendments, we would only support 20%. And so the parking rate for those particular uses only in the Old Town area would actually go up from what they are. And then we wanted to note that the impact of making these changes, even though a lot of the residential developments already meeting the standards, or could be that some of those would reduce the amount of parking provided for residential.

And we can see that we have the capacity to do that. these benefits here could be expanded tree canopy or publicly available parking oh and also noted that special exceptions are permitted for parking as they are with parking for all other districts in the city so we didn't want to change that next we're into dimensions the two main dimensions that we'll talk about our density and height so for density the things we heard at the early part of the process is that density is challenging to perceive and It applies to, or we need it to apply to residential, not necessarily non-residential, because we aren't receiving a lot of development for non-residential uses. And that we should establish clear standards for density.

Small area plans do not have standards for density. They only have standards for height and where buildings should be located, where should we have open space and streets and those types of things. And it was thought that the result is the remaining envelope is what guides what our density is. So with this new district, we're introducing density, which was the desired goal from the beginning of the project. With the proposed amendments, there is a, with the new district, a recommended base density of 40 dwelling units per acre. So anybody who rezones into this district, this would be kind of the starting point. And then from there, there are ways that they can earn additional density. The first way they can earn that is, well, one is through the Affordable Dwelling Unit Program, which is not on here.

that's something that already exists that allows up to a 20% increase in density. And then on top of that, with this new district, we're proposing a land assembly bonus where if a property owner assembles a certain amount of property set to certain standards, they could earn anywhere from five to 15 additional percent. We've talked about this before and kind of wavered on our percentages and whether we should keep it, but where we've landed is that it's remaining in here and those are the percentage increases that we're looking at. And then beyond that, additional units can be earned through the Community Benefits Program. And so we'll just talk more about the Community Benefits Program later on, but just to summarize

how we applied this for those that earned the Community Benefits Program and the types of amenities that they provided. There's no set maximum density that anyone can achieve. It's all kind of even itself out based on the space that's available to provide community benefits. So running this through all the proposals that we had enough information for, it looks like about 43% of those projects do meet the density standards that are in here, assuming that they are able to get the appropriate bonuses. We had to make some assumptions too about land assembly because land had been assembled around different times. 36% could likely achieve these standards with some changes, whether it be reduction of units,

additional open space, or providing additional commercial space. And that amount varies, and these are kind of rough guesses. Trying to take an estimate about what types of changes a development proposal could make and still be financially viable. These are ones we thought were probably within reason. and then the remaining percentage are those that seem to be far enough that there had to be significant change or the proposal just would not be able to move forward there are no special exceptions that are permitted to the density provisions that is something that's different from any of our other standards so this would help ensure that applicants are forced to

Justin Wallaceuse the community benefits program to achieve whatever type of density they're looking for

Paul Naptystaffthe second dimensional standard is height and the desired need at the beginning of the process for this was to establish predictability across the activity standards to reinforce transitions through height and massing transitions being to adjacent neighborhoods into historic areas and to recognize that current zoning supports five stories and activity centers four stories from an old town and three stories actually in some areas but the smaller plan support up to nine stories specific locations in Fairfax circle so the proposed amendments set a they maintain a five-story base height limit or less as is depicted on the maps that are included in the activity center districts these are would come from was it in the smaller

your plans so in some places the smaller plans recommend less than five stories that it would height up to five stories if the smaller your plans recommend more than five stories the base height limit is five stories the additional height if the smaller plan recommends more would be earned through the community benefits program unlike the density standards there isn't a sliding scale here basically if a proposal earns any community benefits on the density side then they can earn the full height of what the smaller your plan supports the reason for that is that if a proposal only slightly increases from density from the base density but they get additional height it likely means that they will have a narrow

footprint achieving that same density which means there's more space for other things such as community benefits and open space and those types of things in addition to that there are further height increases that can be achieved up to two stories beyond the recommendation of the smaller airplane can be achieved if at least 20% of the site is dedicated as open space following the standards of the open space section of the amendment and at least 200 square feet of commercial space is provided per residential unit. The reason this is included is that we asked the planning commission city council over the summer during our work sessions with you if there was a desire to consider additional height recognizing that we have had projects that have been approved

that have had heights that exceeded the recommendation of the smaller plans and view and the response was yes it's something we want to consider but we want to have clear standards on what is considered enough of a community benefit for a proposal to be able to earn that additional height so these are two provisions that we have had in there as a reminder all of these proposals will have to come before the Planning Commission City Council for approval so there might be other things that are particular to a project that the Planning Commission and Council thinks are important for them to earn support. Those are all still things that can be discussed. So the impact of the height standards, 79% of the projects that we reviewed would need

to utilize the community benefits program to earn the height that they are seeking in their proposal. That means that they are either trying to, they're trying to receive more than five stories, but within the limitations of the smaller year plans. 29% and this 29% is included in the 79%. 29% would need the additional height, additional height being that additional two stories that requires those additional amenities to be provided. None of those would qualify because none of those are providing both the 20% open space and the 200 square feet of commercial space. But half of them, or two of the four, to break it down to numbers, are close enough that we think it is possibly achievable with some revisions to their plans.

Similar to the density standards, there are no exceptions permitted. And so the absolute maximum height that someone could achieve, even with the most community benefits in this district is two stories beyond what the smaller plan recommends. in the special exception process that we often use today there is no limitation for that so the last element is community benefits this is probably the most important piece to this and so what we heard in the early phase of the discussions was that it's critical to connect height and density with our community goals as a way to achieve those community benefits because we can encourage community benefits through this process that can't be required as I mentioned earlier

due to our limitations of state code. And that we are dependent on these community benefits to support implementation of the amenities and small area plan primarily being open space and contributions to the transportation network. So the proposed amendments for community benefits include open space, so going back to the kind of base density that can be achieved with this district that can be increased by two residential units for every 800 square feet of open space that is provided beyond that base 10% requirement. So that first 10% doesn't get anything, but beyond that they can start to earn additional residential units. The second piece is multimodal transportation. So this applies to any area of the site that is dedicated for use as either a street, a

say on street parking, the landscape strip that goes alongside the street or the sidewalk that goes alongside that. All of which have to be publicly accessible with a public access easement on it. So they are serving the greater community, not just the development itself. For every 1,800 square feet that is dedicated to one of those functions, an additional two residential units can be earned. And then the last piece, as you may recall, was added a bit later. towards the end of this project about the desire to incentivize commercial uses to be included in these development proposals. And so this one is to allow one residential unit to be earned for every 1,000 square feet of commercial space up to 50,000 square feet and then one unit for every 2,000 for everything

beyond that. We set it at two scales because we realized that a lot of these developments will just this be a mixed use development that is primarily residential that will have a retail or a small office component. And they would earn that one per 1,000. There may be cases where a existing office building or something is retained with a development, which is certainly something we do want to encourage. But the amount of square feet in those types of developments gets to be so high that the additional residential units that can be earned get high enough that there's no incentive for those developments to provide any of the other benefits such as contributions to the street network or open space.

So what the community benefits section means for potential development. In looking at our cases, we have some projects where we believe that additional amenities would have to be provided or fewer residential units would have been requested. others exceeded the requirements of what the proposed district has so the result could be that they could have proposed more residential units or offered less open space or contributions to transportation network or commercial space so the the the list on the left shows that among 36% of projects that are deficient but close meaning that we think they could still possibly happen with some changes. We could potentially have 355 fewer residential units requested, an additional 118,000 square

feet of open space, additional 2,190 square feet of commercial space, or enhanced streetscapes. We didn't put a number to the streetscapes because this would probably have a limited impact. Basically, the applicants will provide streets where they're shown in the smaller plans, and everybody has been doing that. And so they would achieve that bonus, but they wouldn't achieve much more. On the flip side, among 21% of projects that exceed the requirements of what we're proposing, the result could be that there would be requests for 300 more residential units than we have had. There could be 30,000 fewer square feet of open space, 50,000 fewer square feet of commercial space or fewer transportation connections.

Again, all these proposals still have to come to the Planning Commission and Council for recommendation and approval, so there's still room to negotiate on these. This is just setting the standard for what can be requested. So before we wrap up, the last time we discussed this item with the Planning Commission was at a work session on December 14. of last-minute changes as a result of our previous work session with you in July. And so we just wanted to share with you changes that have happened since that work session. One is that the land assembly incentive was reduced by 5%. It had been 10% to 25%. It's now 5% to 15%. We also discussed removing at that time. We heard from the Planning Commission and some members of the council as well that they'd

like to keep that incentive in there, but it was okay to reduce it. The commercial space incentive, we first introduced this idea to you at the meeting in September. Initially, we had a recommended, this is the incentive for the bonus height, the additional two stories. We had recommended that 400 square feet of commercial space be provided for every residential unit to earn that. It was pointed out that with some of the larger developments, the amount of commercial space required gets to be really high to the point where it could be infeasible. So, what we're now proposing with this draft is 200 square feet per residential unit. In looking at all the developer projects that we have received proposals on over the past

10 to 15 years, only among the big projects, only Scout and City Center West would meet this threshold. If it has stated 400, only City Center West would meet this threshold. The commercial space density incentive, we applied that two phase threshold as I mentioned earlier. And on the additional height beyond the recommendation of the smaller year plans, we had also introduced this for the first time. And there was generally support for it, but concern about how we relate to surrounding neighborhoods and the historic district. And so we have applied a bulk plane standard to the edge of the activity center. This will apply the height regardless of whether this is earned or not. So a 45-degree bulk plan is required anywhere where property is adjacent to a residential use outside the activity center.

There's also language that includes a 300-foot buffer around the historic Oakley district where the additional height standard cannot apply. So you're set to the maximum height recommendations of the smaller plan in those areas. The last change, kind of a minor one, this came out of discussions with the city council. All of the commercial incentives when we first introduced them to you, we were really rephrasing them as non-residential uses. So it could apply to industrial or to public and institutional uses. We have changed that just to apply to commercial and industrial. The only industrial use that supported is small scale manufacturing. And then allow the following three public, civic, and institutional uses.

This includes adult daycare, daycare centers, and nursery schools. The reason those three are specifically called out is because they are the three types of uses in that category that could easily occupy a standard commercial space, such as in a shopping center. And so we wouldn't want to get to a situation where we're having to track tenants of buildings to make sure they're compliant with these standards. So that summarizes the changes. As I mentioned, we have kind of a complex set of motions for you. So we have the main package of amendments, the smaller plan amendments is the first set of sample motions. The second are the two independent amendments. As I mentioned, this includes the removal of special use permits for upper story residential

mixed use and multifamily uses in all of the commercial districts except for the commercial urban district. This is intended to encourage property owners to use a new activity center district. Commercial urban is left as an opportunity for any location where we would support mixed use development outside activity centers. This also means that there would not be an opportunity for applicants to request special use permits on commercial properties and sidestep the planning commission because the commercial urban district also requires rezoning. It's not proactively mapped. to a recommendation to reduce the parking for general office uses citywide not just in activity centers from the current one space for 300 square feet to one space per 400 square

feet as you may recall this came up in our during our parking analysis discussions where we found that we had some opportunity or leeway to reduce parking for our residential and retail uses but that our requirements for office seem to be significantly higher than in our peer jurisdictions as well as what the usage rates were. At our work sessions with the Planning Commission City Council, we heard some recommendations about going further than this. We had actually looked at possibly going to one to 500. But just based on our analysis and feedback we have received from our economic development office, our recommendation is to proceed with one for 400. If there's a desire to go beyond this, that's certainly something that can be read into the motion tonight.

So that's the second motion. I also want to point out that there are two versions of the second motion, and that's because both of the sets of motions include the use table that's in the zoning ordinance. And so there's two types of changes there. And so if the first motion to approve the activity center district is approved, there's one motion to be read for the second one if it is to be approved. If the first motion is not approved and the activity center district is not approved, there's a different motion to approve the second set of amendments. And then there's a third motion if you want to deny the independent amendments. And I can help walk you through those once you get to them. Lastly, we are going to be proposing a minor change to the subdivision ordinance.

We have a separate public hearing for that right after this. It should be very short. And so we'll get into that when we get to that public hearing. for awareness the South Division ordinance is different from the zoning ordinance and there's a slight discrepancy we have to deal with if these amendments are passed. So with that, that summarizes our presentation. As I mentioned, we're happy to go through any of the detailed text. We didn't want to go through that because clearly we don't have the time to. But we're happy to answer any questions.

James FeatherThank you, Mr. Napty. Any questions for Mr. Napty? Mr. McCarthy.

Tassos McCarthyHow did you calculate the bonuses? Like, what did you peg the additional this many square foot to another unit for? And I guess the ask there is, are they, do they behoove the city? I'm just not, I'm not sure, like, are they economically feasible for the developer? I'm just kind of not sure like where what we're using to substantiate that

Paul Naptystaffso Mr. Wallace might to be able to file a little more about the kind of how it started I will say once we had the initial recommendation for them I think they use some benchmarks at types of open spaces that were ideal those types of things But once we were started to run tests on our development projects We started to adjust them to a point where we thought that they were not projects so that they would so that we most of them hopefully are remaining financially feasible so we didn't do a financial analysis but we compared them to the proposals that we have been receiving and tried to make them be somewhat intact with at least the majority of them

Tassos McCarthyokay thank you and then just was there anything that we're not thinking of like if we're going to be off if we're gonna be doing this like like housing mix was that something that came up I'm just trying to think if you're gonna do this like we talked about hi

Paul Naptystaffyes and so one of the comments received at the last Planning Commission meeting was whether housing mix could be something that's included in this and it is something we believe we could based on state code it's not something we proceeded with with this draft because I think we would need to go through the What our goals would be with that? Are we incentivizing certain types of housing, certain number of bedrooms, rental versus owner and those kind of things? And we really haven't had those discussions through this process. It's also not something that's really defined in the smaller year plans. So as we go forward, we can always amend this. If we identify other things, other priorities, we've talked about reviewing the smaller year

plans in the coming year. We might have new priorities come out of that. There's been discussion about the green building policy that wasn't included this time because that may come back. So these are three that we felt were we're most comfortable with that we could kind of set some standards to. Other things might come in that are also important to us, and we can certainly tweak this. I should say tweak. We could change this in the future.

Tassos McCarthyGot it. And I apologize. I'm running on E here. Did I see in one of those slides you had something proposed up to nine stories that could then

Paul NaptystaffThat's correct. So the height maps from the smaller plans, these were kind of translated to the zoning ordinance. So what they will look like in the zoning ordinance is shown with these four maps at the bottom. I apologize that they're small, but the one on the bottom right is the Fairfax Circle area, and the dark red area is where that plan recommends a maximum of nine stories. And so if we were to apply this additional height provision that allows additional two stories in that area, development proposals could conceivably achieve up to 11 stories.

Kirsten LockhartThat's only if they're already meeting all the requirements just to get to nine, right? Yes.

Paul NaptystaffAnd then on top of that, providing the open space and having the commercial. Yes.

Tassos McCarthyOkay. And if I'm recalling back, one of the major impetus, one of the major impetuses of this was to make this more predictable so there wasn't individual negotiations. Is that correct?

Paul NaptystaffTo minimize individual negotiations. still have to be some of that but yes and

Tassos McCarthyare you of the this seems incredibly layered and caveated you're of the opinion that this does that for you

Paul Naptystaffyes i mean this is this is complex but it has a lot of definitions in it that we don't have now and so when an applicant approaches us there's more clarity here in what can actually be supported as opposed to through the special reception process where they're taking a read of the smaller plans, which are intentionally loose and making assumptions. And so this adds more definition than we have now. Even though there's a lot of layers to it and it's convoluted, it has definition that we lack currently.

Tassos McCarthyOkay, thank you. Lastly, I would just think long and hard about if we are going to do this, Like, are we really getting the benefit and what we want? Because my, you know, the real estate professional in me tells me that the only time you're ever going to see these done or not when it's, it might be in the best interest of the city, but it's only ever going to happen when it's also in the best interest of the developer. So I just want to make sure that if they're going to get their pound of flesh that we are too. Right, yeah,

Paul Naptystaffand we try to accommodate that. And so we did look at development that's been approved throughout the county in similar types of areas and types of densities they're achieving to make sure we are trying to stay in line with that. It's a balance.

James FeatherMr.

Paul CunninghamCunningham. Thank you. Just one question. Where does development, such as the first one we talked about tonight, where I'm going to approve today's development, but I'm also going to approve development eight years from now in one package. Where does that fall in this kind of matrix?

Paul NaptystaffMy guess for that one, if it's approved, they're requesting rezoning to the planned development district. If they come back with their second phase in eight years, they would likely stay with the planned development district and amend that plan. And so that particular property would not be affected by this. If there were something that were to come in after these amendments were started with the first phase, they would go through this process. They may have a similar looking project. And then they were to come back later. These amendments do have a provision to accommodate phase development. There are standards that say that the amenities that are additional density have to happen in the phase that's earned.

So the first phase would have to provide the open space and so on, but they would also be able to come back in the second phase to finish that. So I don't think that proposal will be affected by this because of the path that they have taken. But if something similar were to come, that could be accommodated through this district.

Daniel DrummondThank you. I recognize the hour is late. I do want to recognize all the hard work that staff has done and consultants in the community have done. And so I really appreciate that. I think this is going in the right direction. But I want to go back to the issue of height, which has been a topic of conversation tonight. Just for the purpose of edification, I'm going to pass this out to my colleagues. And I've shared this with staff previously so they can see it. But I just wanted to offer some perspective here when we talk about what I think is, correct if I'm wrong, question in a statement this is a basically a baseline right so if you look at when you're at 74 stories we're saying the baseline is 84 feet it's seven stories 108 feet it's nine stories

to your point it's 11 stories with the bonuses in that activity center fairfax circle just for some perspective if you were to look at capital one arena standing there as you go in to go watch capitals game that's 88 feet so in other words some of these things we have a baseline of is essentially if i understand it correctly going to be taller than that point at capital one arena and i just want to raise that because i have nothing against density per se but the concern i think is and this is where a question comes in is what kind of flexibility do we have if we want something smaller in other words if somebody came and said you know what I want to build a four-story building in Fairfax circle do we accommodate them

or are they required now to meet a certain baseline minimum the numbers

Paul Naptystaffin here are all maximums this is the the thresholds in here they have to be below these thresholds in order to submit an application we can go through the review process we can negotiate and and have things lower if they want to build a four-story building a lot of the proposals we might get in the future might be townhomes all of that can be accommodated with this district the the main purpose of this is to incorporate the mix of uses and the benefits but an applicant certainly doesn't have to utilize a maximum that this allows for an application in

Daniel Drummondyour long-standing time with the city and this profession you Have you ever seen a developer want to go to the minimum as opposed to the maximum?

Paul NaptystaffWell, we have had proposals come in. We have one that just came in recently on Chambers Road that is in an activity center that's primarily townhomes and condominiums that is well below the densities that are supported in the smaller area plans and well below the heights that can be supported on that site. It's a product type that accommodates that. And so that can happen. I think it will happen. This path would accommodate that just as much as the current process that we have but

Daniel Drummondit's codifying correctly Correct

Paul Naptystaffit is well. They are not sure our path are using but if they're using a plan development Which they might be there's this plan developments don't have any maximum standards. There's no let

Daniel Drummondme refer to it In other words, I guess what I'm asking is this is essentially codifying the small area plans which are now used to as Mr. Vani was saying earlier they were using it based upon recommendations in other words this was recommended but now I think this is what you're going to Mr. McCarthy this is actually taking out the sort of negotiation or a lot of it and basically saying okay this is you know this is sort of rules based here's the box you need to play in as opposed to what we had before so that's one so when I say codifying that's what I'm referencing

Paul Naptystaffyes it

Daniel Drummondis

Paul Naptystaffbut it's also it's setting a maximum that we don't currently So there's still that room for negotiation. This just has a defined maximum that we don't have in the current process.

Daniel DrummondI guess my concern is just that when you incentivize somebody to say, you can go to 11 stores, like a Fairfax Circle, I think we saw a proposal several months ago that was something like that. It just kind of encourages that when, you know, I think you heard a lot of the discussion tonight, what I've heard in the community has been, we really want to try to find more of a balance sort of size and scale and that's my main concern is we're sorting of setting a baseline that could be higher than what I think the community in my opinion might might want so but again the everything else I think is really great work I mean and obviously the community has been very involved this body has been involved the council has

been involved and so we'll see where it goes but I mean that's the main concern that I have is born the more on the height side and again this is just for illustrative purposes. So the community doesn't know, I don't think anybody's proposing building an arena in the city, but it was just for illustrative purposes. Thank you.

Matthew RiceOthers? Grace? I think running this through development proposals in the past is a good touch. There are things we could estimate, we could guess, we could look at other jurisdictions, but But seeing what could have happened or might have happened, you know, based on past things is really the ground truth that is in the city that we have. So this is good work. I like it. And certainly if somebody came to us with an idea, you know, there's less uncertainty about what they can and can't do. and if they want extra height or if they want extra density, they can do it. There's a way to accomplish that with a tangible benefit to the city. I love seeing projects with open space, with transportation access, with pedestrian features,

and it's useful to incentivize that. and frankly difficult to get proposals with, you know, nine different special exceptions requested. And, you know, the courthouse plaza folks that limit it to one, you know, they're making things easier for all of us by doing so. And in the future when we get proposals in small areas, we'll have more predictability. And I think that will eventually be something that the developers will well, they'll be able to see what the constraints are and that it's not going to be this endless negotiation with planning commissioner or city council. So anyway, I support this.

Kirsten LockhartI mean, this body has been wrestling for a while with our ability to weigh in on special exceptions. We've gone back and forth with staff about what that could look like. There hasn't been appetite on the council level to let us play in that realm, special exceptions we see in general, the better. It just makes us a more predictable partner to work with from a development perspective. So from a process perspective, I do see this being beneficial, you know, perhaps some growing pains, literally and figuratively. But I do think that the benefits will be tangible, they'll be clear, and they'll be part of the negotiation process from the outset rather than things that we have to slowly pull out of developers as we go along.

This also gets us a lot further to getting those public amenities that we, you know, have spoken highly of in our small area plans, but that we have, you know, no teeth to actually get otherwise. So looking

James Featherforward to seeing this implemented. Thank you. I'll throw out a question that I sent to Mr. Napty earlier just so you can address it. And the question was, how much new ground are we breaking here? Have these concepts, like we're proposing, been used in jurisdictions nearby us? Do we have any idea of their success? Related, you know, frontages or the community benefits program, for example, have they been successful in achieving goals? What do we know about that? And maybe a consultant can speak to some of that. Yes,

Paul NaptystaffI'm going to ask Mr. Wallace to come up because they certainly have more experience with our other jurisdictions.

Justin WallaceYes, and that's a great question. In our report that we provided, we did look at other jurisdictions, both in Virginia, the state of Virginia, and outside of Virginia, specifically with bonus programs. Myself and my coworker have worked with similar bonus height programs. I worked in Nashville, which is a totally different place, but they had a program and I was on the other side working as staff applying those standards. So I have personal experience working with those for over five years. And so, yes, we looked at different jurisdictions in Virginia, Suffolk, Charlottesville, and I believe Arlington were all looked at. their programs. I would say success is an important, you know, how do you measure success

and what does that mean for you and the community? And I think someone had mentioned monitoring the, you know, over time and I think that's a good suggestion. You know, in a year it might be good to look at it and monitor projects as they come through and see how it applies to Fairfax I think that's a something to chew on anyway but but hopefully that answers your question gives

James Featherus a feel I think thank you I share the concern about height but I also recognize I think it's a pretty high hurdle to get those extra bonus floors and the other thing that is before us is we will be revisiting the small area plans soon enough and I think we probably heard enough feedback from the community that among the things we should be probably looking at is what we show as the stories for buildings so I think there are ways to temper what we might get what might be proposed I think this is probably a good tool for helping better align our vision for what we want as a community which we know evolves and an applicants for potential applicants proposal to bring forward to us so I also think these are good things the

open space changes I think in particular are good for what it can incentivize in terms of open space to provide additional height or density or whatever it is so I think those are all good good changes I had sent a number of additional questions to Mr. Napty, kind of small things that satisfied me that I don't think weren't any further discussion here. But are there any other questions for staff? Okay, this is a public hearing, so we will open the public hearing and invite any members of the public who are present who would like to address this matter to come forward.

Speaker 9Ms. Yes, we have Mr. Fournier.

James FeatherMr. Thank you, Mr. Fournier. Welcome.

William Fournierpublic commentI'm William Fournier and this is the third time tonight. The zoning amendments at this point should not go forward and there are some problems with it that I will give you the reasons for. The small area plans that we have now are fostering big housing projects. You know, for the Old Town plan, once you move from the historic core, the primary land use that the plans talk about is residential. And we've got two that came today. The evolution to residential in all the plans is the only way to accomplish the goals of the rest of the plans. That's what they say. They want to have residential. There are other ways that can add vibrancy to these areas. The existing plans are flawed. Second reason is the method to calculate allowable dwelling units is flawed.

Enabling a project to knock down commercial building and give the project credit for putting in mixed use one with less commercial is wrong. The thousand square feet you allow an additional unit. But they already knocked down 80,000 square feet. Reason three, changing the approach to allow buildings to be two stories higher than what is in the small area plan should not be done. If you go to page C36, section 399, E, maximum height, there is no base height mentioned. It just points to the small area plan pictures. That's not right. Reason four, people's comments during the last open house were mainly against the zoning changes. There's a lot of work that's in there. in what has been done is good but there are problems and just going ahead with

the whole thing is not the right way thank you

James Featheryou others the

Speaker 9next person that signed up I believe is left Jai Laura Vidaya And so we have one other, and that is Douglas

Heidi Wrenpublic commentStewart.

Douglas Stewartpublic commentGood evening. Douglas Stewart again, 1082 Maple Street. I'm a kind of a passionate amateur in every sense of the word, been following these law development proposals with a big interest in walkability, bikeability, vibrant communities ever since moving here. And I have seen kind of, I've been excited about the small area plans. And we adopted the small area plans as a community. But we're in a point where we're getting proposals that are all over the place. And with no real rationale or basis, and I think the one in Fairfax Circle that is 11 stories was a good example of that. that it wasn't really much clarity at all about what community benefits are being provided for all of that height and density the developer is asking for.

And I kind of, you know, my concern is that we're going to keep getting more of that. And I share all of this zoning ordinance. I can't follow it down, you know, a tenth or a hundredth of the rabbit holes that a developer and their attorney can. It's really, really technical. And I also, you know, I think the bonuses for achieving these community benefits, how they're defined, is more art than science. And will it result in something that is going to really reflect what the community wants? I have confidence in all the work that's been done that it will, although it's extremely hard to quantify. and, you know, waiting open space. It's a linear park, you know, better than, you know, a pocket park or whatever is less weighted.

One space could be superior to the other based on how it's designed. So there are all sorts of questions I have, but I think updating our zoning ordinance is absolutely essential and much better than an alternative because it provides clarity and it tries to get what our vision is in our small area plans, you know, kind of burned into our zoning regulations, and that's a really hard thing to do. So I support it, and I also think that, as I think Mr. Walsh, the consultants and others have said, we need to monitor how it's doing and make sure our plans are meeting what we expect and what we hope to get out of future development. Thanks.

James FeatherThank you. Others? Seeing none, we'll close the public hearing and move to commission action. Is there a motion?

Kirsten LockhartMotion pertaining to those amendments related to adopted small area plans. I move that the Planning Commission recommend that the City Council approve the proposed ordinance amending Chapter 110 zoning of the code of the City of Fairfax, Virginia, to amend portions of the articles and sections contained therein, including introductory provisions, zoning districts and regulations, site development standards, development review, and definitions.

James FeatherIt's been moved and seconded to recommend adoption. Was there further discussion?

Daniel DrummondI just have one question, if I may, as staff. So it was just brought up about the issue of ceilings. Can you talk a little bit about whether there is sort of a hard ceiling? If I understood it, Mr. Fournier?

James FeatherI'm

Daniel Drummondsorry.

Paul NaptystaffHe had a comment about the height references. That was my understanding about referring to the maps instead of having a standard height.

Daniel DrummondOkay. Thank you. heard. Thank you.

James FeatherAll right. Any other discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Aye. Passes 4-2. Next motion.

Speaker 9I'm sorry, who was the, you were nay. I

Daniel Drummondapologize. I voted nay. I

James Feathergot you.

Kirsten LockhartAll right. This is a motion pertaining to those amendments related to special uses in commercial districts and general office parking. Is that correct? Yes. Okay. I move that the Planning Commission recommend that the City Council approve the proposed ordinance in attachment F1, amending Chapter 110, Zoning of the Code of the City of Fairfax to amend portions of articles and sections contained therein, including zoning districts and regulations and site development standards.

James FeatherIs there a second? Second. We moved and seconded to recommend adoption of these other changes. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed?

Paul CunninghamNay.

James FeatherPasses? Nay. 42. Thank you.

Daniel DrummondIt closes this matter. Move

James Featheron to our last item on the agenda, for the small area plan subdivision amendments. Mr. Napti?

Paul NaptystaffYes, I promise this will be short. As I mentioned, the subdivision ordinance is a separate document from our zoning ordinance, and so changes here have to be taken under a separate public hearing from your zoning ordinance. With the small area plan related zoning ordinance amendments that were just recommended for approval, they are approved by city council, they will create a new activity center district. we often face with with subdivisions particularly of townhouses which are supported in smaller plans and supported through this new district is that they may front on public or private streets the subdivision has a requirement that all new lots when subdivided front on a public street except when they are in a

planned development district this proposed change would change that language to allow that to apply to the new activity center district as well And as an example, this is an aerial image from North Facts where we have the North Facts West Townhouse development under construction here on the right. You can see part of that fronts on a public street. Each townhouse is on an individual lot. Some of those lots face on a private street. And the current subdivision ordinance can only happen if it's in a planned district. This would allow it to happen if it's in the activity center district. And just for comparison, you can see the assembly development to the left of this. The assembly was built in the 1960s.

also individual townhouse lost a front on private street so this isn't a new practice something that's been going on for as long as the city has been around it's just something that we need to make sure that we can accept through the code so with that this shows the proposed text change that we are proposing with the in the subdivision ordinance you can see item B there it says on every lot shall have frontage either on a public street in a or B on a private street plan development or within activity center district note that we are also proposing to capitalize plan development just to make sure it's clear that this means our plan development districts and not just any development that's planned

and that has come up before as an issue so that summarizes the proposal amendments let me know if you have any questions on that

James FeatherCommissioner, any questions? Mr. McCarthy.

Tassos McCarthyYeah, a quick one and maybe a stupid one, but, you know, what happens when, like, an association, like, it's a privately owned road, an HOA has it, they fail to maintain that street, there's a bunch of potholes, like trash pickup, general pedestrian access?

Paul NaptystaffThose are all separate issues. Creation of the private street and the lots would occur through the subdivision ordinance, but ongoing maintenance, any HOA type issues would occur through other ordinances. They aren't really covered with the subdivision or the zoning ordinance.

Tassos McCarthySo it wouldn't create any complications?

Paul NaptystaffNothing that wouldn't happen today. Okay.

James FeatherOther questions for staff? this is a public hearing are there any members of the public who would like to address the commission on this matter

Speaker 9no one signed up

James Featherand buddy in the room would like to address this on the subject seeing none we will close the public hearing with the matter in the hands of the commission mr

Kirsten Lockhartchair i move that the planning commission recommend that the city council approve the proposed ordinance amending chapter 86 subdivisions of the code of the city of fairfax to amend portions or articles and sections contained therein, including design and improvements.

James FeatherIs there a second? Second. It's been moved and seconded to recommend approval of these. Any further discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye.

John Regan JrapplicantOpposed?

James FeatherPasses unanimously. Thank you. This closes the public hearing section of our agenda and we'll move on to the staff report. Mr. Napty.

Paul NaptystaffThank you, Chair Feather, members of the Planning Commission. Quick look back at City Council meetings going back to actually sorry, but there isn't actually anything to report since your last meeting from City Council. Looking at tomorrow night's meeting, City Council will receive a pre-application briefing on the proposed revisions to the City Center West proposal. Planning Commission received the same presentation on October 12th. On November 10, City Council will have the public hearings on the zoning ordinance amendments that we just talked about tonight with dismalary plans as well as those related to affordable housing on properties owned by nonprofit organizations and other amendments.

That public hearing was held by the Planning Commission on October 12. The two land use cases you heard tonight are currently scheduled to go before the City Council on December 8. This Thursday, the Move Fairfax Committee will be reconvening. They've been away for about a year. Commissioner Rice, I believe, is representing the Planning Commission on that committee. So we're looking forward to that project coming up. You'll be hearing more about it soon. And the Transit Development Plan separately has been going on. There are proposals to change the Q-Bus routes, the most significant change we've seen in quite some time. They've been testing the roots and they will be bringing those forward for consideration by City Council in December.

For upcoming planning commission meetings, your next meeting November 9th, you will receive your introduction to the capital improvement program for the year from the city manager. And then we'll continue those discussions on November 23rd. We're tentatively scheduled to hold a work session with you to begin discussing the Smallinger Plan reviews on November 23rd as well.

Justin Wallacewell lastly just wanted to remind you

Paul Naptystaffall that you are eligible to participate in the statewide Planning Commissioner trainings the next ones coming up will be over two days on January 28 and 29 and then April 8th and April 9 this will be held in person in Richmond at the Virginia Museum of History and Culture or if you prefer virtual, the other session will be April 29 to 30 with the ending session on June 16 and June 17. Please let me know if you are interested in looking at either one of these. That's all we have for the Staff Report tonight.

James FeatherAny questions for staff? Okay, move on to Commission Comments. Mr. Drummond, any comments? Mr. McCarthy.

Tassos McCarthystaff you guys are troopers I hope you all get to come in late tomorrow

Paul Cunninghammr. Cunningham no comment nothing

Kirsten Lockhartfor the group thank you

Matthew Riceso Parks and Recreation had their meeting before our first planning meeting and not always that way we sometimes have the opposite happen so I gave a report last time there's a lot of big capital projects happening at once it's a very challenging department to manage and they have a very flat structure which probably needs to change so on the 19th of November in the afternoon we have a GIS day celebration chair feathers been a part of that for a few years some rusty Russell ESC chair is usually at it I've had a couple of CDP staff present Amy Lynn Denny is she and I and one of my faculty colleagues will be looking at maps that are being designed with a theme of bike paths and trails and students putting

together projected kind of contributions to a future fact book we tried this last year had less success with the timing of what we're doing and so we're doing it a little earlier this year but I'll report on that more next time thanks then what's the date of that GIS day November 19th Thursday George Mason

James Featheryeah thank you from myself the Board of Architectural Review who my body I'm a representative to has been on hiatus for a bit but they will meet November 4th as you may have gleaned from the discussion earlier and they will be having a hearing on the gallery proposal. So I look forward to participating in that. And the rest of you are groupers, too. Thank you for your endurance. You've achieved my personal objectives, getting out before midnight. With that, this meeting is adjourned. Thank you.